We Sail For Celestia

The little Yak fishing village of Whalebone Beach had not lived up to its name for many years, decades even. The whales had stopped coming anywhere near it a long time ago, preferring a more easterly course for some unknown reason, and if there had ever been a beach worthy of the title it had long since eroded away, just a little stub of shingle jutting out from the turbulent waters of the Great Eastern Sea. Here they were, at the base of the Northwick Peninsula, a hundred miles from Harmony Bay, where the commercial fishing trawlers plied their far more successful trade, and several hundred more from Yakyakistan, their homeland's capital.

But the locals scarcely minded any of that. If this was almost the edge of the world, then it was only right that Yaks, that hardiest of races, be the ones to live here. Catching fish was not in their blood like it was for some of the other races- there was no ancient tradition of perching with a rod on a riverbank or swooping from the heavens like a Griffon for a bite- but Yak fishers were still successful at their task, so long as the fish could be found.

There were plenty in these waters to hoose from. Cod, herring, fine salmon often found in the mountain streams that flowed down to the sea, and crabs, mostly filthy mudcrabs that were avoided wherever possible, but some of the deeper red king crabs, too. They all made good meals for the Yaks, and could be sold to those who lived farther inland and had never taken to the coastal life, for there were many who lived such. Most Yaks still followed their ancestral lifestyle, perhaps not in the wandering, nomadic sense in many cases, but still adopting the traditional garb, food, tentlike housing and general culture. It was a land that offered little. The harsh climate meant it was difficult to grow crops, hence the Yaks predilection for wandering, to find new grazing lands, for they could eat the same grass as their steppe-horse mounts and the mountain goats and hardy sheep they kept for sustenance and clothing.

That had not stopped fishing communities like Harmony Bay and Whalebone Beach from springing up, however, as the Yaks had expanded their territory over the years. Now it was all part of greater Equestria, only autonomous in the vaguest of senses, but the Yaks of today, for the most part, cared little for that. So long as they could live their lives in ways they saw fit, and so long as their leaders were not imprisoned, or worse, by the Equestrians, most Yaks were contented to live under their yoke. The Yaks had had their turn to rule most of the known world, but that was long ago, and now it was the turn of the ponies to control the majority of the continent.

A fishing smack had just come into the small harbour with a fresh catch and a strange report. The village elders had gathered to listen to the tale, but before the sailors could complete their story, a shout arose from outside of their hut. They dutifully filed out to see what the commotion was. Out beyond the shallow bay, a long, curved strip of the coast with a gently sloping shingle beach, lay the open water, and the curiosity to which the fishers had been referring.

Just rounding the craggy headland was a ship, coming into view. No, not just one ship, but two...now three, now half a dozen. They were big- from the fleet down the coast, perhaps? An exercise from Harmony Bay? The villagers knew of no such exercise, but news travelled slowly to the isolated settlements this far out. Perhaps a plan to which they, lowly commoners that they were, had not been made privy. They were warships alright, at least, some of them were. They moved almost lazily across the water, while more funnels and smoke could be seen farther out to sea, a picket line of sorts, perhaps, to guard against the enemy, whoever was playing that part in this exercise.

Curious, mused the elders, as they noted a detail that the Yak sailors had not. The ships were not flying Equestrian flags at all. Perhaps these were the enemy, in that case, a detachment from the port playing the role of some dastardly foreigner.

Coming up behind were fat, slow merchant ships, and soon they seemed to cover the outer bay like a carpet. There were at least fifty of them, and it was not long until the sea began to foam with oars and motors, for approaching the little village from the huge cargo vessels were innumerable boats, barges and launches, each one loaded to the brim with ponies. Even more curious.

The Yaks gathered on the edge of their village to watch the spectacle. Even the foals were roused from their afternoon slumbers to see as the ponies came ashore. Except they weren't ponies at all.

The first Kirin boats hit the beach, their keels grinding on the shingle. The soldiers they carried jumped clear, some of them bending down to kiss the stones beneath their booted feet, so glad were they to be back on solid ground after several weeks at sea. They were not navy, but army, and the water was not their preferred domain. They looked smart in their dark-blue uniforms, an outfit that could make one forgiven for thinking they were sailors, so similar was it to the Kirin navy's outerwear. Not all of the Kirin soldiers were so dressed, however; those in blue were the shock infantry, the elite of the Kirin army, and they wasted no time in rushing up the beach, rifles and submachine guns at the ready, on the lookout for Equestrian soldiers. Those following behind in the larger barges, towed by motor-tugs deployed from the biggest merchant ships and transports, wore a dark, rich khaki; they were the line infantry, the regulars. The bulk of the Kirin army, they marched with a disciplined beat to each step, something that could perhaps not quite be said of large sections of the Equestrian military, those recruited from ill-educated peasant farmers and labourers.

The Yaks looked on dumbfounded from the sidelines as this force from a distant shore made landfall in their little village. Trouble was a rare thing in this part of the world, so remote was it from anything approaching true modern civilization, that the whole affair began to take on a rather comical air to some of the younger Yaks. Surely this could not be anything sinister, or else the entire area would have been swamped with soldiers of the Sun, setting up gun emplacements, wire and minefields, to meet this invasion with a storm of fire? The ponies, they knew, valued this part of the world not because of its productivity or its Yak populace, but its strategic position and the protected anchorage that Harmony Bay offered for their navy. The Kirin would not simply be able to march unopposed onto the beaches. One did not simply walk into Northwick, or Yakyakistan, or anywhere that was controlled by the forces of the two sisters.

Yet here they were, hundreds, thousands of them, Kirin of all shades and ranks and uniforms; regulars, the elite shock troops, naval infantry, engineers. With them, they brought their equipment, which they rapidly began to unload as well, carried aboard heavy barges. As the troops moved out to secure a perimeter around the village, the Kirin guns began to land, as well as their supplies. Ammunition crates by the score, stacks of shells for the artillery, bullets for the rifles and machine guns, rations for the troops, horses, one of the few commodities actively traded for by the Kirin during their isolation, for the cavalry.

One Kirin officer, immaculately dressed in his black uniform with a white undershirt, peaked cap, and magnificent russet neck-ruff, approached the Yak elders, who regarded him with a mixture of curiosity and enmity. Who was he, this tall, handsome foreigner, with his odd headpiece and elegantly combed ice-blue mane, to interfere with their little village?

"Greetings to you, and my apologies for the commotion," he smiled. "I represent the Kirin Empress and her armed forces. We shall not be staying long in your town, charming though it is. We will try not to overstay our welcome as the ponies have."

"Yak know nothing of this!" the village elder grunted, in the curiously unpoetic cadence of his species. "Why you here? This Yak village!"

"Yes, it is indeed, isn't it?" the Kirin officer smiled and nodded. "That is what we have been trying to convey to Canterlot for some time now. Alas, they have not been receptive to the concept, so we are here to make quite sure that this village is yours and remains yours for generations to come."

"No ponies here," the elder pointed out. "Only Yaks. Ponies in next town! Why you looking for them, huh? You bring guns to peaceful village! Kirin have bad intentions..."

"Not at all, my good fellow," the Kirin clapped him heartily on the shoulder. "Our intentions are nothing but honest and pure. We wish to free you, to make this land yours once more. We bring guns for self-defence, of course, as you would if going out hunting."

"You hunt with howitzers?" the Yak questioned, pointing at the heavy artillery guns being offloaded from a flat-bottomed barge nearby, their short, stubby barrels covered and plugged to prevent the salt air getting into them and corroding them during the sea voyage they had just undertaken.

"Yes," the officer smiled devilishly, a glint in his eye. "We hunt for ponies with howitzers."

The train rumbled into another siding and came to a halt with the hissing of its pneumatic brakes, causing another murmur of discontent to circulate among the long-suffering passengers. The journey was interminable. None among the 1st Battalion of the 45th Infantry Regiment had ever quite realised before exactly how far it was from one end of Equestria to the other, and none had any desire to ever repeat the journey, though eventually their unit would be rotated back to more civilised lands, which would mean another three weeks, perhaps a month, on board a different, but equally cramped and uncomfortable, train.

"Not again..." Captain Fine Feather sighed. Greenshield looked up from his half-slumber, jolted awake to a world, viewed from his threadbare seat, that was now more familiar to him in his own mind than his foalhood bedroom back at home, so long had he been part of it. The train kept moving, yet never seemed to go anywhere, like an endless nightmare of drudgery and leg cramp. He could only imagine how much worse it was for the soldiers in the freight cars behind.

"Another siding, ma'am?' Greenshield asked, looking out of the fogged window at the landscape outside, equally barren and no less desolate than it had been the last time he looked, however long ago that was, before his latest descent into the strange half-waking world he had been occupying, where a great octopus had been enjoying itself with a strange dance and a look of glee upon its face as it moved across a map of the world, giving him a friendly wave as it passed by before it was gone, over the horizon to who knew where, to continue its dance for somepony else.

"Looks like it," Fine Feather nodded. "There can't be many more of these before we reach Harmony Bay."

"I hope not..." Greenshield yawned, stretching and standing, making his way to the carriage's toilet to relieve himself. The only bit of excitement in the past couple of days was the shock news of the assassination attempt on the Princess, relayed to them when they stopped to refuel the locomotives at a remote waystation at the end of a mountain pass. As he stood over the toilet, he could hear a commotion outside and drew back the blind of the lavatory window to take a look. Half a dozen Equestrian officers were gathered in a small knot beside the tracks, and he could tell from a glance that they were not all from his Battalion, nor even his Regiment. At least one had the pillbox-cap of a Frontier Guard, while another wore the fur-lined hat of a member of the Eastern Command's permanent garrison troops. Major Opal Blitz, the 45th Regiment's commandant, was with them, in animated discussion with the mare with the red stripes and gold diamonds of a Lieutenant Colonel on the epaulettes of her thick trenchcoat. The Major, a gruff and stocky earth pony with a dark yellow coat and orange mane to match his fiery temper, was well-beloved by the stallions and mares of his command, as he cared deeply for the lives of his ponies and was always at the front of the line, leading any attack or at the sharp end of any defence. So the others told him, anyway. Greenshield had not seen any real action with the Regiment, or with any other unit, for that matter.

After giving his hands a rinse in the frigid water of the basin, he returned to his seat, easing his way through the outstretched legs and slumped shoulders of the rest of the company's command platoon, of which he was a member, in charge of the machine-gun section and under the direct command of Fine Feather, who had also picked up on the commotion outside and was peering from the window, wiping it every few moments with her gloved hand to get rid of the condensation.

"What's going on, ma'am? There's a bunch of officers outside. The Major is with them," Greenshield informed her.

"I know, I'm looking at them now," Fine Feather replied. "Frontier Guards...guess we really must be almost there, huh?" The Frontier Guards were something of an oddity, for they were a military force with, technically, no frontiers to guard within several thousand miles. Initially formed as a border protection unit when Equestria was expanding, they maintained that role on the borders with the Griffon Kingdom, Zebrica and the volcanic Protectorate of the Dragonlands, but the Yak territory was now subsumed into greater Equestria, with Northwick being a province and Yakyakistan a puppet state. The Frontier Guards here in this part of the world, therefore, had adopted a broader role as both an anti-smuggling force and an internal police of sorts. Some of the hardiest ponies and Yaks to be found anywhere were members of the Frontier Guards.

Suddenly, there were loud bangs on the side of the carriage and ponies shouting. "Disembark! All troops are to disembark and form up, rifles at the ready! Form up, disembark and form up!"

The cry was repeated down the length of the train, with members of the Frontier Guards hammering on the sides of the freight cars and hauling open their doors, leaving ponies of the 1st Battalion blinking in the stark daylight of a Northwick afternoon. Greenshield picked up his pack and rifle. This was not the first time they had been made to detrain seemingly in the middle of nowhere for a parade or inspection, but this time seemed different. There was an urgency to the shouts of the guards, and the officers seemed to be sharp with their words and orders. Greenshield followed Fine Feather from the train, hopping down to the gravel surface of the siding below. The troops were filing off as ordered and lining up by company. Despite the length of the train, it still only held one battalion of soldiers; the rest of the regiment was even further behind on board other trains, and suffering, no doubt, from equally interminable delays.

The ranks of khaki-clad soldiers contrasted with the white or black greatcoats and caps of their officers and the rich, dark blue of the Frontier Guards, who were present, Greenshield noticed, in some considerable numbers. Major Opal Blitz and the Lieutenant-Colonel of the garrison troops stood front and centre to address them.

"Soldiers of the First Battalion!" Blitz began. "I have grave news. We are at war."

The glances and murmurs of the soldiers told its own story. War? How could this be? With who? The chatter was quickly quelled by Blitz, and he continued. "The Kirin Empire has attacked the Northern Fleet at Harmony Bay and are now blockading the port. In response, Her Divine Highness Princess Celestia has decreed that a state of war exists between Equestria and the Kirin Empire."

The Kirin.

Greenshield was equal parts confused and terrified by the news. The Kirin were secretive, a lonely race from beyond the sea who had but a tiny, token presence anywhere on the main continent, with a small reclusive commune tucked away in the mountainous southern jungles somewhere, he had once heard. They were almost a complete unknown to the common pony, despite their obvious similarities in appearance. Most ponies knew little of them, and cared even less to learn. What Greenshield did know was that Harmony Bay was their destination, and that meant the war was uncomfortably close to him already.

"Furthermore, we have received word from Lieutenant-Colonel Burrowmane here," he gestured to the mare beside him, "that the Kirin may have mounted a landing at or near the town of Whalebone Beach, on the south side of the Northwick peninsula. Our orders are therefore to detrain here, form up with a local force, and march east to protect the railway bridge approximately five miles along this line. We will form a defensive position around the bridge to prevent the Kirin from pushing up from the south and cutting the rail line. It is believed they are attempting to surround Harmony Bay from the land as well as the sea. We must keep the lines of communication open so that the rest of the regiment can pass through safely. That is our objective, fillies and gentlecolts. I suggest you prepare yourselves for a march. We depart in five minutes. Dismissed!"

The confusion Greenshield had felt was now replaced entirely by fear. The war was even closer than he had imagined. No longer were they going to Harmony Bay to merely form part of the garrison and sit around idly watching the ships roll in. They were going into battle.