Ministry Row,

Canterlot,

Central Equestria,

And The Western Arborlands,

Western Equestria,

And Gallopoli,

Eastern Saddle Arabia

“A...guest for you, My Lord,” the older gray majordomo announced in a tone that was properly polite, but made clear that the attendant desired to show the visitor no more courtesy than was absolutely required to uphold the decorum of his master’s station.

As though to validate Maitre’s low opinion of him, a batpony stallion shoved his way past the unicorn and strutted boldly into the office of the Foreign Affairs Minister. “‘Guest’, huh? Partner, you mean,” Nocturne sneered at the older pony before smirking in the direction of the pony he’d come here to see. “Figured I’d give you my latest report directly, so that we can talk about the next steps that you’ve been keeping me in the dark about.” His thinly veiled jovial mask fell away in an instant. “I don’t like being in that kind of dark.”

The Fourth Earl of Bitter Creek, Alabaster Fetlock, would have been well within the right of both his office and his station to have the impertinent batpony thrown―bodily, if desired―from his office for displaying such callous impropriety towards one of Their Majesties’ duly appointed ministers. Nocturne’s position as a high-ranking member of the Equestrian Intelligence Service did not grant him nearly as much leeway as the batpony obviously thought it did. Nor was the leathery-winged stallion nearly as clever as he believed himself to be if he genuinely felt that he was a ‘partner’ to anything.

The earl had no partners in this―assuming that there was even a ‘this’ as far as anypony else was concerned. Not even General Maniple was a ‘partner’. No. Alabaster had not surrounded himself with ‘partners’. He had insulated himself with fall-ponies. The young, inexperienced envoy, Autumn Brisk. The inattentive general who had failed to properly vet the buyers of Equestrian military surplus. The senior EIS operative who had ‘misfiled’ the investigation report on The Ivory Company.

Ponies who, in the course of a thorough investigation―for there would most definitely be an investigation when the ashes of this war had finally cooled―would be found suitably at fault for all that had gone wrong. Ponies other than himself, who was very careful to keep all of his proverbial ducks in a row to weather the storm that none of the others seemed to believe would be coming when this was all done with.

Perhaps that was what really separated the nobility from the plebeians, the earl thought to himself: the survival instincts that were honed by a lifetime of intrigue and backroom dealings as his ‘upstanding’ peers fought over every available vestige of power.

As it was, the noblepony merely kept his well-schooled smile in place as he looked up from the latest correspondence he’d received from Their Majesties’ ambassadors and greeted the new arrival. “I can imagine that a pony in your line of work generally doesn’t like not having all of the pieces of a puzzle at hoof,” he feigned a polite chuckle before nodding towards his majordomo. “Thank you, Maitre. That will be all.” The older stallion frowned, bowed, and left, sealing the door behind him.

“Though,” Alabaster continued, still regarding the batpony with a warm expression, “I do hope that you can at least appreciate my desire to keep information compartmentalized during an operation such as this. I may not work in intelligence, but I am to understand that such measures are a common practice in your line of work, are they not?”

Nocturne seemed to be ignoring the noblepony speaking to him as he strolled towards the decanter on the side of the office and poured himself a glass of the expensive liquor. “The low ponies on the totem pole are given just enough scraps of information to get their jobs done, yeah,” he acknowledged before throwing back his drink and helping himself to another. Then he turned to glare at the earl. “But I’m not one of your henchponies, Al. If I don’t know the big picture, then how am I supposed to get everything done right?”

Despite the familiar referral and impertinent tone, the noblepony actually found it easier to smile at the operative. While it was refreshing to know that he was working with a pony who would ultimately be too full of their own self importance to see the turn coming when they were brought before Princesses Celestia and Luna to answer for their incompetence, the earl couldn’t help but feel just a tad concerned that the EIS was employing personnel of such low quality. Though, in fairness, he was rather certain that Nocturne represented the inevitable exception, rather than the rule. For every dullard like him, there were doubtlessly a few sharp tacks that justified the EIS's venerable reputation. Like that one mare who’d not taken his carefully crafted cover story at face value.

Speaking of which, “That is a fair point, and one that I will assuredly take into consideration moving forward,” he lied. “Though if we could move on to the nature of your visit here? I believe you mentioned making a report on your activities? Am I to assume that means you’ve finally managed to fully curtail the investigation into The Ivory Company?”

Nocturne’s grin was predatory. Even after all of this time dealing with batponies, Earl Bitter Creek still found it unsettling to see a mouth of an otherwise normal-looking equine playing host to so many sharp teeth. It was unnatural. “Field Operative Nightjar missed her last two mandatory report windows, and has been ordered recalled to Canterlot.” He sipped from his glass before shrugging, the grin still firmly in place. “Strangely enough, she hasn’t seen fit to return yet. Rumor has it that she’s gone rogue.

“Turns out her file contains a lot of comments regarding her distaste for authority.” He finished off the last of his drink with a noisy smacking of his lips. “It’s sad, really. She could have had a bright career ahead of her if she’d been willing to play nice.”

“Indeed. A tragedy to be sure,” the earl nodded with genuine sympathy. He did legitimately find it to be a waste when talented ponies allowed themselves to be hobbled by their unwaveringly naïve notions of what they thought it meant to have Equestria's best interests at heart.

“Which means that gaggle of griffons you’re employing can go on and do their little 'false flag' thing for you.” The batpony looked over at the ivory unicorn expectantly.

It was perhaps fortunate that Alabaster had a white coat. It made it difficult to see his face grow pale. His neutral expression remained firmly in place, thank Celestia, but the earl’s mind was working furiously to figure out a way to deflect the unexpected deduction. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tried to make himself sound as confused as he possibly could. “Neither the Ministry, nor my personal estate, has solicited the services of mercenaries―”

“Sandalwood and Sons has a board of directors consisting of exactly three ponies,” Nocturne interrupted, sounding rather disappointed in the minister’s rebuff. “Two of them are low-tier nopony ‘nobles’ so far removed from the line of successions in their houses that they’re willing to sit back and just accept the generous stipend they collect without asking any questions. But the third pony, now they’re fascinating,” that predatory smile was back. “A Miss 'Recher Belle’.

“Now, what makes her such a fascinating pony is that, well...she doesn’t seem to actually exist! I mean, all of the right forms are there, but verifying them was a bit...difficult. The town she was born in was abandoned a century ago, the address she lives at is a back alley in Stalliongrad, and besides all that is how remarkably similar her name is to a Miss Recherché Belle; who―if memory serves―is the name of a character in a Nagatha Crystal mystery. ‘Death in the Clouds’, specifically.”

Nocturne cast an aside glance at the earl. “Miss Crystal was in Manehattan recently for a book signing, as I recall. Your secretary said you were out of the office for the same duration, and confirmed that you’d made a reservation at the Four Seasons. Just you though. It seemed your family was otherwise engaged.

“Now, I’m sure that anypony could claim that was all a huge coincidence,” the batpony shrugged, “and, honestly, who isn’t a Nagatha Crystal fan these days? Anypony could have made up a mare based on a character from one of her books.

“Only, that book is a relatively recent publication, and Miss Belle was appointed to the board of Sandalwood and Sons over a year ago. So, obviously it wouldn’t be possible for you―or whoever it was," Nocturne added with a sly wink, "to have fabricated a pony with a name based on a character in a book that hadn’t actually been published yet, would it?

“Unless...they knew somepony who worked as a copyeditor for Miss Crystal’s publisher...” The batpony feigned thinking intently, and then shifted his expression to one of mock surprise. “Wait a minute, your wife passes her time as a copyeditor, doesn’t she? At the very same publisher too, I believe. My, what a coincidence!

“Out of curiosity, does she bring her work home with her? I think that she’s technically not allowed to let anypony else read those drafts she’s reviewing; but I’m sure that she doesn’t actually lock up those manuscripts when she’s not actively working on them; and I imagine a fan such as yourself would find it difficult to not sneak just a little peak at the next book in the works,” the batpony flashed the earl another toothy grin.

"As to the 'false flag' thing: Maybe most ponies can't tell one mercenary company from the other, but I'm not 'most ponies'. I know who those mercs were and what their reputation is. The Ivory Company doesn't need our outdated military surplus. They didn't pick that stuff up for themselves, which means they got it for a job. And the list of 'jobs' that require Equestrian livery is pretty short, Al.

"It also doesn't take a cartographer to know where those mercs were headed."

Alabaster Fetlock was very quiet for what felt like a very long time as he eyed the batpony with newfound―if not respect―consideration. Nocturne might not have been the most socially graceful pony that the earl had ever met, but it was painfully clear that he had absolutely earned his position in the EIS. The unicorn stallion now found himself wondering if the only reason he wasn’t higher up in the echelons of the intelligence service wasn’t because of his lack of etiquette.

“...You seem quite confident of your speculations,” the earl said very carefully, so as not to give any overt confirmation of what could arguably be called simple coincidences, no matter how frighteningly close the batpony's narrative might have been to the truth. If there’d been any error in the operative’s deductions, it had only been in identifying his wife as the primary reviewer of the manuscripts that she brought home to work on. The reality was that Nagatha Crystal wasn’t his wife’s preferred author to proof for, and so she routinely passed those manuscripts on to himself to look over, as he was indeed quite an avid fan of her works.

The batpony shrugged, his smile still firmly plastered on his face. “It is my job, after all. Speculating. Looking for connections where others see only coincidence. What most ponies fail to understand is that there is no such thing as ‘coincidence’. Every connection exists for a reason. The only question is whether those reasons are malicious or benign.

“And, honestly, the only difference between those is how it gets framed in my reports.” The smile remained, but there was no mirth to it any longer. The two ponies shared a long look at one another before the batpony finally turned around and replaced the glass that he’d been drinking from, exchanging it for the entire decanter of liquor and heading for the door. “I’ll be writing up my final report on the investigation into that arms sale on Friday, just so you know. How it gets framed is going to depend a lot on what I hear from you before then.”

The EIS agent paused at the door and looked back over his shoulder at the earl coolly. “Just so we’re clear, Minister: I’m not a hitpony. You don’t get to bring me in for a job and then send me on my merry way when you think you’re done with me. You and me? We’re in this together now, and I expect to be an equal partner in whatever you’re getting out of this.” And with that, the batpony left.

Earl Bitter Creek sat at his desk, staring at the door, a sneer tugging at the corner of his lip. His carefully crafted demeanor had melted away at the end of their ‘talk’, despite his best efforts. It seemed that even he could make mistakes. Such as taking the senior operative’s file as face value. He was supposed to have just been a middle-manager with a glorified title and a less-than-savory reputation. The latter had certainly proven true, but Alabaster was beginning to wonder about the former.

For the moment, there wasn’t an immediate cause for concern. The mare serving as the head of Sandalwood and Sons’ board of directors was indeed a fabrication, but nothing about her could actually be traced back to him in any way that would hold up during an official inquiry, despite what the batpony implied. At least, he didn’t think so.

The minister frowned. His horn began to glow as his telekinesis tugged on a nearby rope. A moment later the door cracked open and Maitre popped his head in. “Yes, My Lord?”

“I’d like you to bring me all of the financials related to Cousin Ermine’s accounts, if you please?” He cleared his throat. “I think a quick audit is in order.” His eyes went to the tray on the nearby table that was now missing its serving vessel. “And could you fetch the eight-seventy-three for me?”

“Of course, My Lord,” the older unicorn bowed his head and withdrew from the office.

The earl soon became aware of an earnest tapping sound coming from somewhere in his office, and was a little put out to find that it was coming from his own hind leg anxiously bouncing on the tiled floor. He forced the traitorous limb to still, instead settling on pressing his forehooves tightly together as an outlet for his newfound trepidation. He had been very careful when setting up his little shell company to make certain that nothing of it actually tied back to him directly. Even the few indirect connections would be difficult to take seriously.

Cousin Ermine was a case in point. Even Nocturne had seemed to dismiss the stallion as a ‘low-tier noble nopony’. That was an entirely apt description of course. A second cousin once removed through a marriage on his step-mother’s side was hardly a relation at all where the frequently intermarrying nobility was concerned. Alabaster was far more closely related to half the other ponies in the Peerage. Indeed, Ermine was barely even a member of the current nobility. All that allowed him to continue clinging to that thin veneer of status was his ability to affect an air of wealth; which in turn was only made possible by the stipend paid out to him by Sandalwood and Sons for serving on their board of directors. In exchange for that stipend, all that he had to do was rubber-stamp any paperwork put forth for his approval by the head of the board he nominally served on. Even Ermine had no idea who 'Recher Belle' was and had never met the not-mare―though he was ready to swear under oath before the Princesses themselves that he saw her every Monday for their weekly board meetings.

The earl’s barely-cousin also acted as the company’s treasurer, though Alabaster wasn’t enough of an idiot to give the stallion any of the paperwork that he’d need to actually act in that capacity, lest he be too tempted to embezzle some of the company’s funds and end the whole farce. Earl Bitter Creek was willing to cross many ponies to get what he wanted; but only a complete fool risked bringing down the wrath of the Royal Revenue Service down upon them with cooked books!

No, all of Sandalwood and Sons’ income streams were completely above-board, legal, and well documented. They were nonsensical, or course, as any holding company’s revenues were: activism and charities and such that didn’t actually do much more than hold a steady string of fundraisers and benefit dinners; but every solitary bit was accounted for and their taxes were paid in full and that was all that the RRS really cared about.

What was most important was that none of their activities involved the earl in any way, save for the occasional benefit dinner that he attended―along with half the nobility in the princedom.

At least, he thought that none of it could connect back to him. Seeing that Nocturne was significantly more perceptive than the earl had first thought, he decided that it was best to go over the details again. Just to put his mind at ease. A glass of brandy wouldn’t hurt things on that front either.

They were too close to success to risk it all coming apart because he overlooked something minor. This operation couldn’t afford loose ends.

“Celestia help us; how could that have happened?! I’m not even sure what happened!”

Not for the first time that night, First Sergeant Shillelagh suppressed the urge to snap at the teal unicorn mare like she was one of her soldiers. Not simply because of the minor fact that the ministry envoy wasn’t one of the crystal mare’s soldiers, but also because she had long ago concluded that the civilian-minded unicorn wouldn’t likely respond well to that sort of treatment and her nerves were frayed enough as it was.

Hers weren’t the only ones either, Shillelagh noted with an eye to the three other ponies―well, two ponies and a horse colt, anyway. Corporal Cravat was distracted enough with caring for his patient that it was hard to tell how much he was genuinely rattled by the evening’s events. The colt was doing about as well as could be expected under the circumstances. He hadn’t wanted to leave the village, but neither had he been in much of a condition to do anything about it.

While she was grateful that his crying had subsided from a security standpoint, she wasn’t certain how well it boded from a mental health one. She could empathize with the colt though. She’d seen enough young ponies in his position during her time in the Resistance in the lead up to the Crystal War. Sombra had been ruthless during his brief reign. Many were the hamlets that had been razed to the ground for bucking his authority even slightly. Losing everypony he’d ever known wasn’t going to be something that the colt recovered from any time soon, no matter how calm he seemed to be now.

Private Flashover was hard to get a read on too. Whatever her personal feelings about how the unicorn conducted himself with the mares, he was a competent soldier. Perhaps even a good one if she was ever forced to admit it―under pain of death most likely. Since their hasty exodus from Gallopoli, he’d been performing as an excellent pointmare, with his mind seemingly squarely fixated on ensuring that they didn’t wander into any further unfortunate surprises.

However, it was his outgoing and personable nature that had her concerned for him. He made friends easily, and he’d made a lot of friends since coming into the unit six months ago. While the company medic might arguably be the closest friend he had in the unit, the senior noncom knew that Cravat wasn’t the only close friend he’d made. Friends who were now doubtlessly dead. From her own experience, she knew that there were going to be many ghosts and doubts that haunted him in the coming days. Some would last the rest of his life.

For the moment, those two at least had distractions in the form of their duties, as did she. Autumn Brisk did not. For that reason, the first sergeant was willing to extend the envoy more patience than she otherwise might have under other circumstances. “The town was attacked,” the crystal mare answered coolly, “likely by bandits. It’s not something that is entirely unheard of.”

What the emerald mare didn’t add was that the level of skill that they’d demonstrated was quite abnormal. They’d obviously managed to neutralize every one of Bronco Company’s sentries without raising the alarm. The fact that they’d apparently acquired Equestrian Cavalry barding had probably had a lot to do with how they’d managed to accomplish that, but that too only spoke volumes about their competence and preparedness. Even if those raiders couldn’t have known that an Equestrian military force would be guarding the town―after all, even Bronco Company hadn’t been given much forewarning―they had to have realized that the barding of an Arabian ally would allow them to get close to the town without raising a lot of suspicions. Close enough that, by the time their true intent was revealed, there wouldn’t be anything the horses living in Gallopoli could do about it.

How they’d managed to acquire that much gear was another concern. A few sets of barding occasionally made it onto black markets, she knew. Unscrupulous soldiers who wanted to make a quick bit. Stolen sets. Armor that was stripped from the dead after a skirmish before the bodies could be recovered. Such things happened. In this case though, those bandits had gotten hold of hundreds of sets of barding.

That was...concerning. Something that was most certainly worthy of being reported to the brass back in Canterlot.

“And so they just killed everypony?!” The envoy said in a near-hysterical tone.

“A corpse doesn’t tend to make much of a fuss while you’re stripping it of valuables,” Shillelagh quipped a little more glibly than she’d meant to. The mare took a deep breath in order to help soothe her own nerves. It seemed that recent events were taking a toll on her as well. She was familiar with experiencing such tragedies perhaps; but it didn’t mean that she was immune to their effects.

“This isn’t Equestria,” she began again with a much more soothing tone. “It’s much more...volatile out here. Groups like that don’t hit Equestria that often because they don’t want to risk bringing Celestia’s wrath down upon them.” Removing an entire empire from existence and banishing your immortal sister to the moon for a millennium did much to earn somepony a reputation as being one that only the most foolhardy would dare cross. “Saddle Arabia does not have a ruler with the sort of power our own princesses wield.

“It makes raiders considerably bolder.” Her expression hardened now. “Though the news that so many of Their Majesties’ soldiers were slain will likely spur Equestria to the sort of action that will serve to remind such groups why attacking ponies is...unwise for centuries to come.”

Equestria might be slow to anger, but she was a force to be reckoned with when her rage was stoked. The emerald mare took what solace she could in the knowledge that their slain comrades would be avenged in the fullness of time. Of that, she had no doubt.

First, however, somepony needed to get word to the princesses about what had happened.

“So much death,” the unicorn shuddered, looking almost ill at the thought, “I had no idea…” She shook her head, slowly. “I...I can’t even begin to think of what to do next.”

“We press on,” Shillelagh said simply, “we follow the Captain’s orders and reach Camp Legume. In a few days, we’ll meet up with Lieutenant Whirlwind and the contingent we left behind in Little Buck.” The first sergeant idly wondered how those soldiers would react to the news of what had happened in Gallopoli. But for a twist of fate, it could just have easily been any one of them who’d died during the attack. That sort of survivor’s guilt likewise played with a pony’s mind.

The counselors in Canterlot were going to have their hooves full.

“Oh, Celestia; Captain Corsair!” The teal mare spun around and looked behind them. “She should be back by now, shouldn’t she? Shouldn’t we go back for her, or―”

“That would be unwise.”

Everypony’s gaze shot upwards as the mare’s voice rang down from above. The crystal pony noncom felt a tension she hadn’t been aware that she was retaining ebb out of her as she caught sight of the cobalt pegasus gliding down towards them through the canopy. Captain Corsair alit in the middle of the formation and gestured for the paltry remnants of her command to gather around. The pegasus tried to hide her own anguish, but Shillelagh was familiar enough with her CO to see in her eyes how deep this blow had cut her. The ponies of Bronco Company had been entrusted to her care, and now they were dead. The stain of that failure bit into her very soul.

“A few of the villagers escaped,” she began, “about a dozen as best as I can tell. The bandits didn’t seem to be interested in giving chase. Thank Celestia for small favors.”

“My father…?” The young Saddle Arabian colt croaked from the travois being dragged behind Cravat.

Corsair was only able to meet the young horse’s gaze for a second before looking away. “He defended his village well,” was all that she could bring herself to say on the matter before looking back to her senior noncom. Behind her, she could hear Cravat attempting to console the colt, who'd renewed his sobbing.

She stepped closer to her senior noncom and lowered her voice so that the rest of what she had to say wasn't easily overheard by the colt. He didn't need to hear the details of what had happened to his friends and family. “They’re tossing the city and stripping the dead; which is expected.” Then she frowned. “But they’re counting our dead.”

“Ma’am?”

The pegasus nodded her understanding of the crystal mare’s surprise. “They lined up everypony from Bronco Company and started taking a count,” she reiterated. “I couldn’t get close enough to see for certain, but I think they even had a roster that they were referencing.” She held the older mare’s gaze meaningfully.

First Sergeant Shillelagh looked incredulous. “You’re not suggesting what I think you are, are you ma’am? That doesn’t even make any sense.” Her eyes darted away from the feathered officer and passed over from the envoy to their medic before looking back questioningly at Captain Corsair.

The company commander didn’t mistake the meaning behind the crystal mare’s shifted gaze. They matched up with the pegasus’ own thoughts on the matter. There was a very short list of reasons that occurred to her as to why those ‘raiders’ would be taking such a keen interest in their little company. Simple bandits would have no reason to be taking inventory of which ponies they’d killed. Certainly not like these creatures were. She had actually figured that she was looking too far into their actions at first, but the longer she had watched, the more clear it had become how methodical they were being about inventorying not the captured arms and armor, but the ponies themselves.

If she didn’t know any better, she’d have thought that the raid on the town had been mere collateral in order to get at Bronco Company. Or, more specifically, somepony in Bronco Company.

There were only two ponies that she could think of who would be worth going to that sort of trouble: an official envoy entreating on behalf of the princesses, and the only colt of one of the higher-born nobles in the realm.

Corsair wouldn’t pretend that she knew every mover and shaker in the Equestrian Peerage, but she knew that the nobility tended to have something of a ‘shadow war’ going on behind the scenes amongst themselves. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that somepony was trying to get at the Minister of Public Health through her colt. Though the pegasus would have liked to think that something this brazen was a little extreme even for those sorts of charades.

Honestly, it was for that reason that she was inclined to lean more towards the possibility that those bandits had had designs on the envoy. Perhaps they had been acting on behalf of another nation in an effort to get ahold of a representative of Equestria’s government for some purpose? Even then, it was hard for her to imagine what ends they could possibly have hoped to achieve. Celestia was not reputed to respond well to such overt violence. She and her sister were hardly likely to be brought to any sort of negotiation table by threats like that.

The pegasus frowned.

Then again, she thought, never attribute to malice what can be just as easily attributed to stupidity.

Just because she knew that sort of plan wasn’t going to work didn’t mean that the bandits did.

Not that Corsair believed she would find any of her anguish soothed by the revelation that all of her ponies had been slain because somepony had misjudged Celestia’s reaction to being blackmailed. Honestly, nothing short of crushing the throat of whoever was behind this with her bare hooves was likely to bring her any peace on this matter.

The mare took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Those thoughts would hold for later. For now, they had more immediate concerns. She looked back to her senior noncom. “We’ll leave it to the EIS to make sense of the ‘why’s. Our concern is getting to Legume.” Her gaze darted to their orange unicorn pointmare. “Maintain point, private. But I’ll fly picket.” She regarded everypony now. “We’re going to put as much distance between us and Gallopoli as we can.” Her eyes lingered on Autumn Brisk specifically now. “We’re not stopping until at least noon.” She held her gaze until she finally received a reluctant nod of understanding from the mare.

Corsair looked back to her crystal counterpart. “Move them out, Top.” She leaped into the air before Shillelagh could render her acknowledging salute. Protocol could wait until they were no longer in mortal peril.

“I’ve already counted three times,” the griffon hen insisted, no longer even trying to hide her exasperated tone.

“Well then count a fourth time,” Captain Hawkwood hissed at his second-in-command, “and if the numbers come up wrong again, you’re going to order a detail to comb every inch of this town to look for those missing bodies and then count a fifth time!”

“I already did that after the second time I counted,” Gertrude snapped back. “They’re not here, captain.”

The hippogriff snarled, venting his frustration on his empty silver goblet that had once contained some rather expensive red wine. Unfortunately, that had been spilled when he slammed his fist on the table after being informed that their pony count had come up short, and that they’d managed to identify three of those who were missing.

What made it so frustrating was that they were literally the three worst possible members of the contingent here that they could have afforded to have been among the missing: the group’s commander, their senior noncommissioned officer, and the bloody envoy!

A perfect sweep of the Equestrian camp couldn’t have been guaranteed. That would have just been hoping for too much. Somepony would have been off relieving themselves, or carousing in town somewhere, or walking an unmapped patrol. Something would have kept them from accounting for every single pony that was supposed to be here. That was inevitable, and mostly manageable.

The whole point of targeting the ponies had been to ensure that there wasn’t a credible conflicting account when the few surviving Saddle Arabians reported Equestrian soldiers razing their town in the middle of the night. In the face of dozens of eye-witnesses, a destroyed town as evidence, and enough scattered Equestrian weaponry left among the corpses of the local inhabitants, it would hardly matter what a few enlisted peons claimed had ‘actually’ happened. Of course the perpetrators of the heinous crime would insist they were innocent!

Unfortunately, things became considerably more complicated when those ‘deniers’ were ponies of rank and the official envoy dispatched to Gallipoli on behalf of the alicorns themselves. The creatures that investigated what happened here would at least listen to an officer and a senior noncom. They were definitely going to give the envoy’s words some weight!

Especially if she mentioned seeing griffons and hippogriffs among the attackers. Attackers wearing Equestrian barding. Hawkwood wasn’t a mastermind, but he doubted that it would take the Equestrians long to connect the dots between non-ponies wearing Equestrian barding attacking a town just a week after a group of non-ponies picked up a load of barding from one of their forts.

Barding that was all bought and paid for on the up-and-up with a paper trail that specifically mentioned The Ivory Company.

That wouldn’t have been a problem if nopony was the wiser. Unfortunately…

The tiercel sighed in frustration and slumped back down into his chair, massaging the bridge of her beak. “I thought we’d already confirmed that we’d killed their commander?”

The hen frowned now too. “That report was made prematurely,” she admitted, “Danzig said that she found the command tent, poked her head inside, asked if either of the ponies in there was the commander, and one of them said that he was in charge.” She sighed and shook her head. “We never actually briefed anycreature that they were supposed to be looking out for a blue pegasus mare and a green crystal pony specifically.

“She found ponies in the command tent that said they were in charge.” Gertrude shrugged. “She passed on exactly that. By the time the report got to me, I assumed they’d offed Corsair and Shell-what's-it.”

Hawkwood let out an exasperated sound. Mostly because he was genuinely hard-pressed to find fault with any of his mercenaries. “Lesson learned, I guess. We haven’t exactly done a lot of hit-work. Obviously we’re rusty at it.” No helping that now, the hippogriff knew. “So if Corsair wasn’t in the command tent or her personal quarters, then where was she? Or the envoy for that matter?”

“We’re still not sure,” the griffon admitted, “we didn’t exactly leave a lot of witnesses for questioning lying around,” she pointed out.

“It hardly matters, I guess,” Hawkwood said, smiling wryly at his second. “Five bits gets you ten as to where they’re headed by now.”

“Sucker bet,” Gertrude scoffed, knowing full well what the answer was and why there was nothing more that they were going to do about it.

It was a no-brainer that those ponies were on their way back to Equestria. With the six-hour-plus lead, it was unlikely that even his fliers were going to catch them before they hit the border, and Hawkwood wasn’t stupid enough to send his mercenaries into Equestria to hunt the survivors. In fact, there was only one thing he was going to do: pack up and go back to Roam.

“Fine. Wrap up the looting and get everything organized to go back home. We’re done here.”

“Sir?” The hen’s eyebrows raised in mild surprise.

“Contract’s failed. The report’s going to reach Celestia from credible sources that griffons and hippogriffs were among the creatures who raided Gallopoli. Equestria knows that they don’t use either in their Cavalry. They’ll have no trouble at all convincing the Saddle Arabian sultan that Equestria isn’t to blame for this.” He shrugged. “At the moment, they don’t have any conclusive proof The Ivory Company was behind this either, so at least our reputation with the horses won’t be any worse than it already is.

“I'm not going to chip my beak trying to keep the good earl’s ‘master plan’ from going up in flames. What’s he going to do, rat us out? If we go down, he goes down. We’re covered. Worst that’s going to happen to us is that he won’t try to hire us for a job like this again.” The hippogriff rolled his eyes. “You can imagine how much sleep I’m going to lose over that.”

The griffon hen’s smirk mirrored her commander’s as he continued. “So let’s just take our spoils and fly off. We'll dump the bodies of the ponies in the bay like we're supposed to, but I’ll draft a letter to the earl to let him know his scheme’s hit a squall beyond that. We may have fucked up, but we can at least be professional about it.

“If he wants to try and salvage this mess, that’s on him. Me?” The hippogriff bent down, picked up his fallen chalice, and refilled it with wine. “I’m going to focus on moving forward.”

Author's Note

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