The Siege Of Canterlot

It was another clear morning over Canterlot. The blackbirds, finches and thrushes were warbling away in the treetops to signal the dawn of a new day, as the night watch was replaced by the day watch in the Equestrian defensive lines. 6AM, regular as clockwork. Troop rotation was important, especially with a relatively small force available to the defenders. If soldiers got too tired, they would be poor fighters, and poor observers too, potentially missing some vital sign or signal that could alert them to enemy movement. Eyes were kept clear through the provision of plenty of tea loaded with stimulants, or coffee for those from the western reaches where that drink was more popular.

The night, as so often, had been quiet. No enemy raids had been launched like they had two nights earlier, a retaliation for the attempt on the Shadow Army's cannons. That had inflicted a few casualties on the defenders, but no serious damage had been done to the strength of the line. The enemy had remained quiet since then, no attacks, day or night. Nothing to hold the attentions of Equestrian observers. Just the raucous laughter of a besieging army from their tents at night, as ten thousand campfires burned on the plateau, like a host of fireflies.

With the sun already starting to warm the land, the day watch took their positions. Corporal Snapshot was among them. Fresh from the excitement of their raid, the ponies under the command of Captains Oats and Breaker had been rested for several nights to help them cope with the loss of their comrades and the exertions required to carry out the task. Though it had been a short sharp shock to the system, it had used a lot of energy and adrenaline, but they were at least hailed as heroes by the civilians, as they had been the ones to knock out one of the mortars and halve the frequency with which hell would rain down on their heads. Now, Oats's unit had been returned to the frontline to hold a section of the palisade wall outside the Unicorn Gate.

Snapshot found himself a relatively comfortable place to rest and settled in, for there was not much for him to do once the handover was complete and the defences had been given a customary check to make sure everything was in order. Oats told her ponies to prepare their breakfasts and eat while they could, as the morning bombardment would be beginning in the not too distant future. Billhook brought round a bucket of porridge, into which each soldier dipped their metal canteen mug to fill it, eating with a wooden spoon. The sugar ration had been halved, not giving them a lot to sprinkle on top, but it was tasty enough, and filled with nutritious oats to keep them going. Snapshot swallowed each mouthful, but it was hard not to feel the empty space.

Ramble was gone, one of his friends from the unit, and several others, others he did not know very well but who had become part of their group since Oats rallied all the survivors from different companies and led them to safety from Trottingham. Snapshot had not seen the gruesome spectacle outside the city with the execution of the prisoners, but he had been called outside to witness the bizarre spectacle of King Sombra's shadow projection that hung in the sky as his voice boomed out across the city. The fate of Ramble had been relayed to him by others who had been on the wall that day. They simply said he had been killed by the enemy, but Snapshot demanded to know exactly how, and then wished he hadn't asked. He had felt sick to his stomach for the next two days as a result.

There was an unwritten but usually accepted rule in warfare across Equestria and beyond, that you did not commit what might reasonably be called atrocities by the public unless the enemy had already done so. That included things like torturing captives, cruel methods of execution such as that displayed on the field outside the city, massacring civilians, mass rape, and other horrific acts. These war crimes were considered beyond the pale for any civilised nation, and most combatants agreed that they would not carry them out unless provoked by similar crimes, and certainly not use them as an actual tactic to influence enemy morale or public opinion. The Shadow Army and the Changelings, however, had evidently decided to break the unwritten code with their blatant, public execution of the three prisoners in such hideous ways. Far from undermining Equestrian morale, however, it had only hardened their resolve. If Sombra's ultimatum was to surrender and denounce the Princess in exchange for guaranteed survival, then he would find that there were not many among those inside the walls who were willing to choose the way he desired.

"How are you feeling, lad?" Billhook asked, completing his rounds with the porridge and returning to seat himself upon a short stack of boxes.

"Oh...a little better, Sergeant," Snapshot replied, dropping his spoon into the dregs of his porridge and putting the mug aside. "I suppose it's good to have something to do again. The last couple of days...I don't know, I've just been thinking too much instead of doing."

"Right." Billhook nodded. "Too much nervous energy going about. Part of me wishes they hadn't closed down the brothels and gambling dens," he chuckled. "A restless unit is a jumpy unit. Ponies need to blow off steam now and then. Keeps them fit and ready when it matters. Well don't worry lad. You can get back to focusing on soldiering again now. That was some damn fine work on that raid, by the way. Shame it went south at the end. We almost got away with it with minimal casualties."

"Maybe we shouldn't have gone after that mortar," Snapshot mused, sipping some water from a flask. "We overstretched ourselves."

"Maybe, but that was the main objective of the entire raid," Snapshot pointed out. "We did a good thing. The Shadow bastards won't be able to use it again. Not after we stuffed an entire drum of powder down its barrel. They'll still be picking pieces of it out of the terrain. It was a good job and well done, and the civilians needed it. Having that thing bringing down hell on you every day, not knowing when it's going to strike or where...they're not paid for that, they're not trained for it. It's not exactly meant to be part of their everyday experience. Now we just need to get the other one, too."

"Right...they're not going to send us out again though, are they?" Snapshot asked, sounding more nervous than he intended or wished to.

"I doubt it," BIllhook shook his head. "There are plenty of other units that want a chance at glory. They'll send somepony else after the other mortar. We're not some special team. Although that gives me a good idea. Maybe we should be..." Billhook mused. "Oats's Raiders? Oats's Infiltrators?"

Snapshot chuckled and nodded. "Maybe, Sergeant. Maybe one day they'll organise some kind of special team for this kind of mission. Going behind the lines and such...must be better than just picking any old company out of the line and making them put some mud on their faces, right?"

Billhook nodded with a grin, but before he could say anything, the ground beneath them began to shake. Billhook blinked and looked down, jumping up from the boxes where he had been sitting, thinking they were giving way under his bulk. But it was not the boxes giving way; it was the earth itself.

"Shit, a quake!" somepony shouted. But the plateau upon which Canterlot lay was relatively geologically stable, and not prone to such things. Snapshot sat up and looked around in confusion as ponies all alone the line grabbed their muskets. Suddenly, the ground to their left, to the east, seemed to shatter, like a saucer tossed carelessly onto the floor. Dust burst from the cracks in the earth, and suddenly a great fountain of dirt, dust, and debris launched itself skyward like the plume of an erupting volcano.

Snapshot, unsteady on his feed already thanks to the rumbling ground, found himself hurled aside by a sudden blast wave, the air sucked from his lungs. The world became a tumbling blur as he rolled end over end again and again before finally coming to a stop as he smashed into something. His head span and his side and left wing ached. Dust and dirt filled his eyes and mouth, and he coughed, slowly managing to sit up, rubbing his hands across his face and looking up at the sky.
It was filled with dirt, a huge column of smoke and dust and soil, heaved into the air. And now, it was all coming back down again.

Snapshot managed to crawl under a nearby wagon as debris began to pour from the sky. Something clattered onto the wagon, then something else, then a dozen blows, striking the wooden vehicle from above. Mostly it was soil and dust, but there were shattered fragments of rock, crates, sacks and barrels, muskets, ponies. The pointed spikes of the palisade wall rained down like a hail of arrows, as though the heavens were playing a giant game of darts with the Equestrians as the target. Something crunched into the wagon and its axle bowed, taking on the sudden heavy weight almost overstressing it and crushing Snapshot beneath the cart. After thirty seconds, everything was silent.

Snapshot peeked out tentatively before emerging. A pall of dust hung in the air like an early morning mist, shrouding everything in an eerie sepia-like tint, like one of the magical photoluminescia, the beautiful and haunting portraits of ancient rulers, generals and nobles that could be found in the palace in Canterlot, that had been created long ago using an esoteric form of magic to immortalise a still image of ponies now long dead.

There was death here, too. Snapshot could see bodies, crumpled where they lay, either killed in the concussion of the blast or dropped from the sky to their deaths. At least one luckless pony had been impaled from above by a plunging wooden stake from the palisade. The palisade...shit, what happened to the palisade?

Snapshot looked, peering through the dirt. It was everywhere, obscuring his vision. He couldn't see much, or hear much. But suddenly he could hear a whole lot. From out beyond the perimeter came a loud roar, but this time it was the roar of ten thousand voices, shouting in triumph. And they were getting closer.