Saddlesbury,

Western Equestria

Some ponies would tell you that nopony can yell louder than an alicorn wielding the Royal Canterlot Voice. Those ponies had clearly never heard a sergeant major forming battle lines.

“MUSTER UP! MUSTER UP! Let’s go, fillies!”

Nutmeg winced slightly as she heard the call of her battalion’s senior noncom ringing out through the camp. Her hooves, which had already been struggling a fair bit in their efforts to secure the last few pieces of her barding, became even more enfeebled in their efforts to manipulate the gardbrace that seemed intent on fighting her with every fiber of its being. In a somewhat ironic—to her mind—twist, the additional flange built into it which served as a neck guard was making it rather awkward for the brown cataphract to get her head around it and use her teeth to help tighten the strap. She let out another string of muttered curses as the segment of armor continued to thwart her.

A purple head wearing a steel helmet that covered nearly the entirety of her face and muzzle poked into the tent, what was visible of the the newly arrived mare’s expression appearing equal parts exasperated and unsurprised. “For fuck’s sake, Nutmeg; hurry up! Of all the formations to ever be late for, this is not the one!”

“I know, I know,” the struggling pony mumbled around the strap in her mouth. “I just can’t seem to get this—” The leather buckle slipped from her teeth as she was giving her excuse and the whole piece of armor slipped free and fell to the ground. Again. “Aagh! Violet, a little help?”

“For fuck’s sake,” The purple let out a resigned sigh. “One of these days you’re going to have to learn to dress yourself; because I’m not always going to be around to do it for you.” She stepped the rest of the way into the small tent, fully armored in her own barding, though she’d elected to leave her lance outside.

While Violet was actually a couple years younger than her brown comrade, she stood a whole head taller than the other mare and had been in the cavalry for a good bit longer. As a result, the broad purple pony tended to behave in a way that was evocative of being the other’s adoptive older sister. It wasn’t a view that Nutmeg particularly resented—and moments like this one, where she needed the bigger pony’s help to get her barding on, made it hard for her to deny the parallels in their dynamic.

“Yeah, yeah…” She picked up the gardbrace and did her best to hold it in place with her hoof so that the larger mare could attach it.

Violet spent a few moments looking first at the dangling straps of the gardbrace, and then at the form-fitting steel-plates which already covered her friend’s withers before saying, “no wonder you’re struggling: you buckled the straps in the wrong order.” She brushed her armored hoof over an exposed strap that wasn’t supposed to be exposed. “This one should have been done later. We’d have to undo half of this to get it on.”

Her ear flickered as the sergeant major yelling outside the tent managed to somehow rise a few more decibels. “We don’t have time to fix it,” the purple pony declared. She batted the shoulder piece out of the other mare’s grasp, sending it clattering into a nearby bedroll. “Just forget it and grab your lance!”

The smaller brown mare, who had also winced slightly as she heard the additional yelling, only spared one last furtive look at the shoulder piece before deciding that her friend was right and that there just wasn’t enough time to attach it. She snapped up her helmet in her hooves and slipped it on over her head. She peered around the floor of the tent for a few more seconds with her newly limited field of view before finally finding her lance and collecting it in her mouth and following Violet outside. Once free of the confines of the tent, Nutmeg swung the lance upright and craned her neck to slip it into the brace on her right side. She gave her barrel a little shake, her eyes watching the sharp steel-capped blade at the top as it jiggled but didn’t fall forward. Beside her, Violet had secured and readied her own weapon.

“WHY AREN’T YOU WITH YOUR SECTIONS?!”

Neither mare wasted even the second it would have taken to confirm that the two of them were the ‘fillies’ in question that the sergeant major was yelling about and took off at a gallop towards where their regiment was forming up before moving out to the battle lines proper. If there was any consolation to be had, it was that the pair didn’t look to—quite—be the last ponies making their way out of the collection of tents. However, they were most certainly among the last to come cantering up to the broad rectangular formation of heavily armored ponies. They fell wordlessly into place in the formation, pretending not to notice the critical look they received from their own squad sergeant who was probably going to have a word for the two of them about their tardiness later on in the day.

If we even survive the day, the poisonous thought couldn’t be kept from flickering through Nutmeg’s mind.

It wasn’t any kind of secret by now that the horses outnumbered them by more than double. That wasn’t an ideal situation to be in under any conditions, but it was a problem that was further exacerbated by the fact that they—ponies—would be going up against horses.

Nutmeg had never met one before herself. All she had to go on were the descriptions she got from her follow cavarlymares. Even factoring in the typical grunt’s penchant for exaggeration, it was clear to the brown mare by now that the smallest adult Saddle Arabian stood head and shoulders above even larger mares like Violet. The prospect of charging at a creature twice her size was…daunting, to say the least. She was thankful that she wasn’t going to have to do it alone.

There were a few ponies in the regiment who had relatives who’d fought in Maregypt during The Arabian Revolt. Intellectually, Nutmeg knew that everything that they’d been saying for the past few days was second-hoof and especially prone to being exaggerated. However, that didn’t mean that there weren’t also little kernels of truth to some of those stories. And the horses had won the war in the end.

The little brown mare’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of somepony yelling. Though it was somewhat difficult to make out the exact words through her helmet, combined with the great distance, Nutmeg recognized the inflection as being a preparatory command of some sort. A heartbeat later, the mare heard the captain in charge of her company echo the command: “Forward…!”

There was only one possible order which could have followed that word and so when the less than clear shout once more came from the front of the formation, Nutmeg and every other pony around her stepped forward with her left forehoof. The air around her filled with the sound of heavy steel-shod horseshoes striking the ground and the clattering of armored plates rubbing against each other over moving bodies.

She could feel her anxiety slowly rising with every step. They were marching into battle. The enemy was bigger than they were. There were a lot more of them too. All of the officers and more senior noncoms had voiced nothing but confidence in the outcome of the fight, certain of an Equestrian victory. Their commanding general was a veteran of The Arabian Revolt. She’d been an officer in the Battle of the Dunes, the only pony victory in that war. If anypony knew how to beat horses in a fight, it was her.

Nutmeg wanted to trust that the general knew what she was doing. She wanted to share the confidence of the ponies over her. She didn’t want to be afraid she was going to die.

She didn’t want to be…

…But she was.

Brigadier General Reconnoiter of the Twenty-Second Chargers stood at the front of her army with her pegasus aide-de-camp, a few pegasus couriers for passing orders to her subordinate officers, and the better part of a full platoon of cataphracts ‘on loan’ from Colonel Dandy. “To cover you during the fighting, ma’am.” Is what the mustache had insisted they were there for officially.

To carry my sorry flank out of here the moment the battle turns, is what he really meant, the powder blue unicorn mare thought ruefully. It hardly seemed like a coincidence to the general that a few members of her new retinue were wearing noticeably stripped-down sets of barding that were considerably lighted than what a true line cataphract would be wearing. The second it was clear that her forces were going to break, those ponies were going to grab her and run.

Reconnoiter hadn’t decided yet on how fiercely she would fight them in order to stay. Rationality was still warring with her sense of personal honor and pride. There wasn’t a clear victor yet.

The unicorn diverted herself from those thoughts by focusing on what lay ahead of her across the river. The sight of ten thousand armored horses was an intimidating one, even at this distance. If there was one saving grace to be had, it was that there wasn’t a way for the Saddle Arabian commander to commit that full number to a singular attack and simply wash over her own smaller force. Both of them knew it too. There was a reason that the two opposing armies were standing along this section of riverbank. It was the same reason that there hadn’t been a bridge built nearby until just a few decades ago when the local provincial government found itself with some extra money in their infrastructure budget: there was a ford here.

The Tame River was one of the larger ones in western Equestria, in terms of length anyway. It wasn’t particularly broad, for a river. At most points anyway. It was fairly deep though. Except for a few places where the terrain allowed for the river’s banks to broaden out considerably, with its depth decreasing accordingly to the point that a pony could walk through the modestly flowing water without getting much more than their fetlocks wet. That traversability only existed for a couple hundred meters though. Beyond that, the river got much deeper, and started flowing much faster. While an enterprising pony could manage to swim across if they really wanted to beyond the ford proper, such a prospect was far less easily accomplished in full metal barding.

So, while she or the Saddle Arabians would be able to walk—or even charge—their forces across this section of river without too much trouble, it presented both sides with a narrow front. It actually allowed Reconnoiter to turn the smaller stature of her ponies into something of an advantage. With both armies being constrained to the same frontage for their forces, the side with the least bulky soldiers would be able to place a numerically greater number of them at the front at any one time. So while her army would be going up against bigger horses, the Saddle Arabians would be facing more lances.

Whether that would be enough to turn the tide of the fight…

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Reconnoiter took a deep breath and let it out. Then she looked over to the pegasus captain next to her. “Ready, Drafty?”

“As I’ll ever be, ma’am,” the stallion flashed his general a sardonic smile as he reached into the saddle bag at his side with a wing and withdrew a small missive and a ribbon. He turned to one of the couriers with their group, a mare—damn near a filly, as far as Reconnoiter judged—and passed her the letter and the pristine strip of white cloth. “Take this across the river to Miralay Qasam, private.”

The pegasus mare had been reaching instinctively for the message, ready to fly off with it and deliver it to its intended recipient, but she immediately balked when she heard who the letter was actually intended for…and where they were. Her ruby red eyes nearly doubled in size as they danced between the parchment and the enemy army. Her lips moved wordlessly as she clearly tried to figure out how to respectfully ask the general and her aide if they had lost their pony-picking minds?!

Reconnoiter tried not to smile in amusement at the sign of the younger pegasus’ distress. She really did. “Relax, private,” the old unicorn said. Her horn began to glow and magic took hold of the offered ribbon, tying it snugly to the courier’s hoof. “It’s called: a Parley. It’s an older custom, but the Saddle Arabians should recognize it.

“They won’t hurt you.”

The courier swallowed back her trepidation and finally took the letter that the captain was holding, stuffing it carefully into the satchel slung across her chest. “Yes, ma’am.” Snapping off a quick salute, the little mare hopped into the air and flew off in the direction of the Saddle Arabian army.

The brigadier spent a few seconds watching the courier leave and then rolled her neck, eliciting a couple of loud pops from the aging joints. “Well, we might as well start down now,” she announced a moment before trotting ahead towards the river. “Group; ahead! Or however that’s supposed to go…” she ordered in a cheerful-sounding tone. It had been a long time since she’d had to issue an order to move soldiers herself.

It took the ponies behind her a moment to recognize that they were advancing and there was a small amount of less-than-professional scampering of hooves as the little detachment surged ahead to catch up with their ward. Eventually they’d reformed themselves into something of a square that surrounded the older armored unicorn general. She rolled her eyes but made no comment. Instead she occupied herself with a casual inspection of the preparations that had been made through the night and the early morning.

As the Arabians were the aggressors who’s objective required that they advance further into Equestrian territory, the Twenty-Second Chargers had been granted the role of ‘defender’ in the upcoming battle. They’d prepared themselves to receive an attack by the horses—which did also allow them another small advantage in the fight—by setting up what few fortifications that they could manage around those units which would benefit the most from them.

The first such preparations that Reconnoiter’s band walked past were the earthworks thrown up around pairs of unicorn casters. The piled mounds of dirt came all the way up to the necks of the horned ponies behind them. While trained cavalry mages were perfectly capable of conjuring shields and defensive wards to protect themselves from sling stone, arrows, bolts, or even other spells, doing so represented a diversion of attention as well as a waste of mana that would be better served for fireballs and lightning bolts. A wall of dirt stopped an enemy arrow just as effectively as a magical barrier and it didn’t require the mage to spend even a fraction of a second’s thought to do it.

Captain Will-O-Wisp commanded a total of ten unicorn batteries, of which each was made up of eleven individual unicorns—ten casters and one spotter. This would provide for at least some level of magical artillery support for her brigade, but objectively wasn’t much when considering what they were up against. Captain Wisp had spread them out along the bank to let them hit the ford from all sides in an effort to maximize their effectiveness. However, at the end of the day, combat magic was inherently mana-intensive magic; and that meant that even a powerful unicorn would burn out fast.

The expected standard for a battery unicorn in the Royal Equestrian Cavalry, was to be able to cast a lethal combat spell at least once every five seconds. A decently powerful unicorn could manage to sustain this rate of casting five minutes before burning out and being lucky to manage even basic telekinesis, for a total of around sixty castings—depending on the destructiveness of the spells being used. If a slower rate of fire was used—say, one every ten seconds—a battery unicorn might manage seventy or eighty spells before hitting their limit. Even that only gave Captain Wisp’s unicorns about ten minutes of stamina.

A battle on the scale that they were looking at facing here today had the potential to last hours.

Reconnoiter would either get intense fire from his batteries during the opening moment’s of the fight, or she could receive a trickle of spells for the duration. Frankly, with the latter option, the efforts of the unicorn casters would hardly even be noticed by the enemy. So she’d settle for the former, hoping that ‘Shock and Awe’ would stifle their initial charges and make it easier for her ponies to withstand those first brutal hits. If her ponies saw that they could stop the Arabians in their tracks, it might give them the confidence they needed to believe that they could actually win. It would keep her lines from breaking too soon.

Because they will break. Eventually. I’ve decided that. But if we can just hurt the horses enough, maybe we can force them to go back home, the unicorn mare reasoned. We can buy time to mobilize a bigger army…

She shook the thought from her head. She didn’t need that right now. Because all of that only came into play if she couldn’t find a way to reach some accord with Qasam. If she failed.

If I fuck up, four thousand ponies—and Celestia knew how many horses—die.

So…don’t fuck up, Rico…

Beyond the entrenched unicorn batteries were the Twenty-Second’s skirmishers: lightly armored earth ponies setting up their bows. There were considerably more archers than there were unicorn casters; a full battalion of four hundred or so. These had been massed into two sections to either side of the ford so that they didn’t have to fire over the armored cataphracts that would be meeting the horses in a melee.

Last, but certainly not least, were the lines of heavily armored cataphracts that stood between the Arabian army…and the rest of Equestria. A bit dramatic there, eh, you old nag? Well, certainly between this river and Camp Legume, the unicorn corrected herself with a suppressed smile.

Reconnoiter and her escort were through their front lines far too quickly. Less than half her army consisted of the heavy cavalry chargers. Depending on what the Arabian’s had in terms of army composition, it was entirely possible that her cataphracts would be outnumbered on the front by as much as four-to-one. Even with the narrowed front keeping the horses from sending more than a certain number at a time at her ponies, it would only be a matter of time before she had no more ponies left to stop them with.

The old unicorn stopped her retinue at the water’s edge. On the far side of the river, she could see her opposite number standing among his own escorts, to include a singular pegasus hovering just overhead. At least, she presumed that was who the stallion was on the other side. It was possible that Qasam had sent a representative instead. Such a thing was technically permissible under the old customs of Parley. She really hoped that hadn’t been the case though, as she had really been banking on getting to try and hash this whole mess out with a creature who understood what was at stake here if it came to blows.

Somecreature who knew the wretched stink of a battlefield the morning after.

She looked out across the shallow water, spying a sandbar that poked out just above the gently flowing surface just about halfway between both banks. That would serve as good a place as any for a meeting. Her horn started to glow, her magic touching the clasps on her fore and hind greaves and releasing them.

“Ma’am?” The head of her ‘escort’ eyed his charge warily.

“Stay here. All of you.” Reconnoiter ordered as she kicked the reinforced and sharpened horseshoes free of her hooves. She saw the protest on the faces of the ponies around her and cut it off. “They’re not going to attack me,” the unicorn assured them. “They’re here to talk.

“You stay here.”

There was no further—voiced—objection to her order, but it was plain that nopony was happy with it. But, as far as the old unicorn was concerned, that was one of the advantages of being a general: you didn’t have to worry about whether or not ponies were ‘happy’ about the orders you gave, so long as those orders were followed. This time it appeared that they would be. They at least let her step out into the water without further comment.

On the opposite bank, as though her own advance had been a signal, Reconnoiter spotted a horse and the pegasus start making their own way across. The flier quickly sped on ahead, the courier pausing by the general long enough to salute and inform her that it truly was Miralay Qasam that was coming to meet her. She looked exceptionally relieved when the unicorn thanked her and sent her to join the rest of her retinue on the riverbank.

Reconnoiter continued on ahead.

This is madness!

The young stallion snorted in frustration, pacing back and forth along the bank where his miralay had bid him to remain. It mystified Chiaus that this whole farce had made it this far. There was no reason at all to talk with the ponies, for there couldn’t be anything that they had to say which was worth listening to. When the pegasus courier had shown up with a message that had not been an offer from the pony commander to surrender their forces, Chiaus had ordered her bound and brought before the miralay.

Qasam had not been happy about that, it turned out. He’d chastised his lieutenant for being ‘disrespectful’ towards the pony. Chastised him again even more harshly when the young lieutenant had suggested that they respond to the pony commander’s offer to talk by sending back only the courier’s head.

“We are not animals, young Chiaus.”

“The ponies who slaughtered our mares and foals in Gallopoli certainly behaved as such!” He had countered with a snarl. “They should be culled like animals!”

He’d been told to stay quiet after that and so watched in simmering silence while Miralay Qasam released the pony courier’s bindings and read her message. That the old stallion had agreed to actually meet with the ponies—!

It could serve no purpose, so far as the younger officer could tell. If the commander of the pony force was not going to offer unconditional surrender of their army, then there was no productive conversation to be had. The ponies were outnumbered and outclassed by the Saddle Arabian force in their lands. The pickets and scouts had reported that no more than four thousand ponies were encamped on the other side of the river, and Chiaus could see plainly now that their reports were correct.

The ponies were doomed. They couldn’t win. So their choice was to either surrender or die. And since the message earlier hadn’t suggested that the ponies were going to offer the former, then there was no need to ‘talk out’ the latter!

This was all just a waste of time.

Chiaus snorted in annoyance once more and continued to pace, eyeing the unicorn standing on the sandbar in the middle of the river. Waiting for the aging miralay to finally acknowledge the ‘truth’ that the rest of the horses here already knew and order them to begin the assault…

Bigger than I remember them being, Reconnoiter thought to herself as she eyed the armored stallion stepping onto the sandbar. She had to crane her head up quite obviously to meet his gaze. To a mare who had gotten used to being the one in the position of power and authority during her dealings with others, the dramatic height difference was a little off-putting. Not that she was a particularly vain individual. It was simply an unusual dynamic for her to experience.

She sat down, which raised her head a few more inches and mitigated how dramatically her neck was turned up.

Then the stallion sat down too. Reconnoiter’s polite smile became slightly strained as she angled her head up higher once more. Oh well.

“I’m Brigadier General Reconnoiter, of Their Majesties’ Royal Cavalry,” she began, “thank you for meeting with me, Miralay Qasam.” The last was said with just the slightest of questioning tones. The dossier she’d gotten back from Canterlot hadn’t included any kind of picture of the stallion, so she was still mostly just sort of assuming that was who had come out here to meet her.

The old stallion shifted for a moment in his armor, grunting and wincing in discomfort before he finally nodded in acknowledgment. The unicorn supposed that he was just as unused to wearing full barding as she was. “Of course, general. Would that our meeting was under better circumstances.” The horse’s eyes darted briefly to the general’s retinue…and then the arrayed forces beyond them.

He looked back at her. His expression was resigned. Almost sad. “I suppose that it would be too much to hope that you are here to offer the surrender of your army?” Nothing in his tone suggested that he held out much hope of that, but the question still needed to be asked. “I promise safe conduct for all of your soldiers. Perhaps even paroles for most of them…”

Reconnoiter’s own eyes darted briefly towards the horses lined up beyond the miralay. There was a fleeting moment where she wasn’t ashamed to admit that she thought about it. The smile she offered to the stallion was apologetic. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, miralay. My orders from Their Majesties are to stop your army ‘at any cost’.

“How likely am I to convince you to go back across the border?” Like the stallion’s in front of her had been, the unicorn mare’s question contained no hint of genuine hope that she’d receive a truly welcome answer.

“My sultan has commanded that I lay siege to Camp Legume. I cannot defy his will.”

Reconnoiter’s ears wilted. It wasn’t news that was truly surprising, of course, but it was still disheartening to have her predictions confirmed. Both of them were bound by their orders…and neither of them could leave here until those orders were carried out to the letter—

The mare blinked.

…Maybe that’s actually not such a bad thing.

Before she let that thought gain too much traction and get her hopes up, only to have them dashed again against the rocks of reality, the unicorn general narrowed her gaze slightly at her counterpart. “...Miralay Qasam, what exactly do your orders say? Why are you heading towards Camp Legume?”

The stallion frowned now, clearly considering quite critically how wise it would be to reveal the specific contents of his orders to the commander of his adversary. Eventually he seemed to conclude that the risk was rather minimal. After all, once his army had crushed the pony force here, who was going to be left to reveal the details of his army's mission to Canterlot?

“We are to encircle the garrison there and pin them,” he finally revealed. “It is to be a show of dominance and strength of arms to compel your princesses to the peace table.”

Reconnoiter suppressed a frown at the latter part of the miralay’s statement. She had no clue why either the ponies or the horses needed to be brought to the ‘peace table’—she didn’t know why they might even be at war! That was a consideration for later, and likely for those far above her anyway. Her foremost concern—here and now—was averting a lot of what she saw as unnecessary bloddshed. On that matter, she finally spied a faint glimmer of hope. She even allowed a hint of a smile to touch her lips.

“Miralay, I think that I may have erred earlier,” she began, earning a raised brow from the horse. “I didn’t introduce myself quite properly, so allow me to try it again.” She held out her hoof towards the stallion. “I’m Brigadier General Reconnoiter, commander of Their Majesties Twenty-Second Chargers…out of Camp Legume.”

Her lips spread into a broader smile as she saw the Arabian commander’s confusion blossom into realization upon hearing those last four words. “We’re the garrison that you’re here to ‘pin’.” The general looked around in an exaggerated fashion between the horses on one side of the river, then her ponies on the other, before flashing the horse a rueful smile. “And I’d say that you’ve done so quite effectively.

“Celestia knows I’m not going anywhere,” she continued, “not with your army set up right there. You’d run me down if I moved,” she noted. “And…I notice that your own army is just sort of...standing around over there. As in: they’re not advancing any further into Equestria.

“It's almost like they’re…stopped. By the presence of my army.” She gave the stallion a knowing look. “I’ve stopped you.”

The old horse’s lip was starting to curl up into a smile of his own as he grasped what the unicorn was trying to accomplish hare...and found himself very much amenable to it. “...And I’ve pinned you,” he observed.

“You have,” Reconnoiter agreed. Her tone became slightly more playful now. She couldn’t help it, she was just feeling too good about having found a way to keep their armies from coming to blows. “I don't usually let stallions ‘pin me’ on first dates.

“I must really like you, miralay.”

The stallion’s eyes widened briefly in surprise, clearly not expecting to hear that sort of crass humor during a negotiation between high-ranking officials over a serious matter such as this. However, he soon let out a chuckle that quickly bubbled over into a deep laugh of his own. It was one that didn’t last long, turning into a few wet coughs that only ended when he finally managed to get himself back under control. He cleared his throat, rubbing his chest briefly before finally reaching out with his own larger hoof and tapping it lightly against the unicorn’s.

“I think I like you too, General Reconnoiter.” There was a faintest hint of strain in the stallion’s tone. He clearly wasn’t fully recovered from his coughing fit. Or whatever had brought it on in the first place.

The mare wasn't paying it much attention though. She was still in too much of a daze at having found a way for the both of them to fulfill their orders to the letter without having to shed any blood. Sure, maybe both of them would get in a lot of trouble over this later when their superiors got word of the deal they'd struck, but that didn’t change the fact that nopony—and nohorse—was going to die today.

“My friends call me: Rico.”

“Qasam.” He cleared his throat again.

“Well, Qasam, I’m really happy you agreed to meet with me,” the unicorn didn’t even try to hide the relief in her voice. Everything was going to be okay. It still barely felt real to her. A giddy laugh escaped her lips, devolving into a loud snort as the next thought occurred to her. “My officers are going to think I’ve spit my bit if I tell them to pull all my ponies back from the river while your horses are still all formed up like this.

“I don’t suppose I can ask you to pull some of your formations back first?” She ventured, still hopeful, but also mentally prepared to hear from the stallion that she was pushing the bounds of what their nascent friendship permitted her to ask from him in terms of favors. “Just a few? To calm my ponies down.”

Qasam was nodding. “I will send a couple of my cohorts back to the camp,” he agreed, wincing and swallowing. His coat was visibly glistening with a light froth. "Then you can—" A ragged breath. "You can pull formations back. I will pull more..."

The unicorn was finally over the most of euphoria and so now was catching on to the stallion’s obvious distress. Her expression furrowed in concern. “...Are you alright? Do you need some help?”

He was already shaking his head in denial. “I am just an old horse,” he assured her unconvincingly, clearly used to fielding questions about his health and brushing those concerns aside. He struggled back up onto his hooves and started to turn around. “There is little that doesn’t hurt these days.” Another stifled cough. “I will go and pull my cohorts back,” he assured her. “Then I will—” a wheezing cough cut him short and he staggered a little on his hooves as he stepped into the water. “—I will rest.

“That is all I need: a little—” More coughing, wetter this time. Spasms that seemed to wrack the old stallion’s whole body. “—A little…res…”

His legs fully gave out from under him.

“Qasam!” Reconnoiter lunged forward, her horn already aglow as she reached out with her telekinesis to catch the falling stallion. She managed to catch the larger stallion in her field and lower him gently to the ground on the sandbar before rushing over to his side. “Qasam, what’s wrong?”

The stallion didn’t respond to her question. He was barely even breathing. Reconnoiter’s mind scrambled as she tried to think of what she was supposed to do. He needs a medic! She had to get him help, and quickly.

Her ear twitched. There was yelling. A lot of it. At first, the mare thought that somepony had recognized that the Saddle Arabian commander was ill and was already putting out the call for assistance. But the more she listened, the more she recognized the nature of the yelling. While she didn’t understand the words, she knew the tone: it was a battlecry.

Brigadier General Reconnoiter looked up towards the Arabian lines. Qasam’s escort was running towards them through the water.

They were in formation.

Their lances were lowered.

Chiaus’ eyes never left the sandbar, glaring at the two equines talking in the middle of the river. This is taking too long, he sneered to himself. It was clear that the pony wasn’t there to surrender. This wasn’t a discussion about terms.

What galled the young lieutenant even more was how unconcerned the unicorn looked. The mare was wearing a damn smile on her face! The smugness of ponies. Their misguided sense of moral—and magical—superiority on full display for all to see as she disrespected their miralay by not taking him seriously.

She probably asked for this meeting so she could taunt us, Chiaus thought bitterly. She certainly didn’t look like she was going to defer to the obvious martial superiority arrayed against her—

The stallion balked, his eyes wide.

And now she’s fucking laughing at us?!

Chiaus’ blood began to boil, his hoof pawing at the sandy riverbank as his rage became even more difficult to suppress. He saw that insufferable mare laughing at his miralay. He saw the old stallion’s body quivering with his own rage at the insult being leveled against him. He saw his commander finally recognize the futility of trying to get the pony to see reason and turn away from her, shaking his head in resignation.

Then he saw that treacherous unicorn attack him!

Her horn lit up while the stallion’s back was turned. She struck him with whatever vile spell she had conjured, and the miralay collapsed instantly. He hadn't even had time to cry out.

“Betrayal!” Chiaus cried out, his voice cracking as grief and anger raged within him. He didn’t even look at the other horses with him in the escort detail. He simply charged ahead. “Attack!” He roared. “Attack!”

A heartbeat later, dozens of hooves were splashing through the water behind him. His order was carried back up the riverbank, echoed from one horse to another. A dull thunder rolled through the air, as thousands of armored horses surged ahead as one…

“No…”

It had escaped the powder blue unicorn’s lips as little more than a breath. A denial of reality. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing—didn’t want to believe it. Especially since she’d believed that she’d just succeeded in averting it!

“Rico!” A stallion’s voice reached her ear. Still reeling from the sight of the charging horses, the unicorn mare stared blankly at the sight of her aide-de-camp steaking towards her, flanked by a pair of the pegasi couriers that had come with her group. Beyond them, the rest of her retinue was charging ahead through the shallow water.

Captain Downdraft landed beside her, a wary eye towards the oncoming Arabians. They only had seconds before Qasam’s escorts were upon them. “Ma’am, we have to get you out of here!”

“No! He—” Reconnoiter looked back helplessly at the old stallion laying before her. “We…” We’d been so close, she lamented. There was hope! But now, without the Saddle Arabian miralay…

No.

No, she wouldn’t give up—she couldn’t. Not when salvation had been within their grasp!

“He needs medical attention!” She told the stallion, jabbing a hoof at the miralay. “Get him to the aid station!”

Downdraft was shaking his head, reading for his commander. “Ma’am, we can’t—”

“I can’t save us!” Reconnoiter shouted at her aide, stunning the stallion to silence. “He can!” Qasam was the only one who would be able to call his horses off. The only one who could stop the battle. “So take him—!”

The unicorn mare cut off her word when she caught sight of her aide’s suddenly wide eyes and horrified expression. She turned around to see what had caused the stallion so much worry. Reconnoiter had just enough time to catch sight of the hail of arrows descending towards her before she was tackled to the ground. “Get down!” Downdraft yelled.

Long shafts of polished wood, fletched with the brown and white feathers that belonged to a species of falcon which was common in Saddle Arabia, fell around them. Most buried their bodkin points in the sandbar. Some did not.

Pegasi did not wear the same thick plate mail that heavier earth pony cataphracts did. It reduced their speed and endurance in the air, which were often as essential to preserving a flying pony’s life as protective barding was. As such, both Captain Downdraft and the two feathered couriers with him, were wearing just their cotton gambesons beneath thin brigandine vests to allow for maximum flexibility and mobility in the air. The steel points of the Arabian arrows had as little trouble piercing it as they did the sand.

Reconnoiter felt the stallion shielding her jerk with pain as arrows slipped through the meager metal squares covering his vest. She heard him gasp wordlessly as he tried to cry out in pain with a pierced lung. She saw his wing out of the corner of her eye as it quivered briefly in a spasm of pain…and then went limp.

She felt him die.

The unicorn shut her eyes against the tears that threatened to fall. She shoved herself back up to her hooves, rolling the dead weight of her aide to the ground. It was then that she saw that he hadn’t been the only one slain by the rain of arrows. The bodies of the two other couriers who’d come with the captain were crumpled on the ground. The sand around their bodies was already starting to turn red.

It was only a matter of time before the whole river was stained crimson.

The pony brigadier turned her tear-filled eyes back in the direction of the oncoming horses. They’d stalled—briefly—in order to avoid being caught by the hail of arrows from their fellows, but they’d renewed their charge once more. They’d be upon her soon to finish the job that the archers had started.

Her eyes looked down at Qasam. He had not escaped the storm unscathed. A shaft stuck out of his flank. It wasn’t a particularly grievous wound, but it was surely a painful one. The old stallion moaned. It was a quiet, airy thing. But it was a sound.

Qasam was alive. And as long as he was alive, there was hope.

Reconnoiter’s magic flared to life again. Not taking her eyes off the approaching horses, the unicorn sent her magic digging through the satchel of one of her dead couriers. She found one of the small scraps of parchment that would have been used by them to write down her orders, along with a pencil. The message she scrawled on the parchment wasn’t a long one. There wasn’t time enough for a lengthy explanation of what she needed from its intended recipients. Besides, she only needed them to do one thing…

Once the message was written, her horn flared more brightly. The next spell that the unicorn was going to cast was far more mana-intensive than mere telekinesis.

Reconnoiter was not a powerful unicorn. She had never served as part of a battery. She had entered the cavalry as an officer, an administrative pony through and through. Prior to commissioning, she had been something of an academic, spending far more time in higher education than perhaps was strictly necessary. The young unicorn had drifted from one major to another, trying to find purpose in her life. Just because you knew what your talent was didn’t mean that you had a firm grasp on what you wanted to do with it for the rest of your life.

She’d lacked direction. The Cavalry had given it to her.

So, while she wasn’t among the most gifted of unicorns when it came to raw ability and magical prowess, her many years spent in school had seen her taking quite a few of the more advanced classes in magical theory. There were a lot of spells that she knew—structurally—how to cast, even if it would be a struggle for her to actually evoke them. Transmutation. Enchantment. Illusions.

Teleportation…

She’d passed the exams. Maybe not aced them, but she’d demonstrated an adequate grasp of the concepts of the spell-work at play and had managed practical demonstrations in a classroom environment that were acceptable to her professors. She could perform the spells. Just not as adeptly as a more talented unicorn.

And it had been a long time…

The gathered magic made the old unicorn’s head hurt. Which made it harder for her to fumble around in her memories in search of the information she needed that had been buried beneath decades of passed time and military schooling. The matrices that she constructed were undoubtedly sloppy. She could feel her old professors judging her from wherever they were not. Surely they’re dead by now. Some of them were older than I am now!

Reconnoiter wasn’t trying for a good grade this time though. She wasn’t worried about losing points on efficiency. She just needed the spell to work!

There was a flash of blinding light. When it faded, Qasam and the note were gone, leaving only an exhausted unicorn mare standing among the bodies of her dead pegasi. She was breathing heavily, panting from the exertion. Her head drooped. Her shoulders sagged. Her watery eyes stared ahead at the lances of the oncoming horses.

The splashing behind her of the charging retinue was growing louder. Her ponies were coming to save her. To fight for and defend her.

They’re coming to die with me.

It was a dismal thought, but one that was hard to really deny. There was no escape for her, or the ponies with her. There was no hope for them. But…maybe…there was still hope for everypony else. Everycreature else. If Qasam got to where she’d tried to send him—if the ponies there bothered to read the note—then there was. Still. Hope.

Oh, Celestia, please let there be hope…

Please…Save him.

It was the last thought going through Brigadier General Reconnoiter’s mind when the Saddle Arabian lances arrived.

Author's Note

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