The Blueblood Papers: Prince of Blood

Inspecting the troops is usually a mere formality. I’ve done it a few times in the past before this blasted war even started, on occasions where Princess Celestia was too busy with whatever crisis you haven’t heard of because she dealt with it so well (as opposed to the ones you have heard about), and the Royal Guard regiment had to make do with me doing the honours. I have even inspected a few foreign units in my time, during tedious state visits to places like Griffonstone. By and large, the regiment being ‘inspected’ is immaculately turned out, and even the Griffons made an effort in appearing presentable, so all one has to do is merely walk up and down the lines with the officers and make the occasional comment about how very professional they all look. If it all goes well it’s usually over and done with rather quickly, less than an hour, certainly, and everypony can carry on with their day. This one, however, remains simultaneously the most tedious and the most eventful inspection that I have ever undertaken in my ‘career’ as a Prince.

The tedium came from Princess Twilight Sparkle’s impromptu history lesson about the Ponyville militia. Readers, whoever you ponies are, with an appreciation of the strictly limited amount of time we mortal ponies are allocated in this life will thank me for respecting the grains of your hourglass inexorably slipping away not writing her lecture here in full. I don’t recall most of the precise details, which meant the rest of it was largely irrelevant anyway. Ponies might assume that the Princess of Friendship’s tendency to expound pointlessly on such topics as showing off, but having been on the receiving end of a great deal more of these than I would have otherwise liked, I can safely say without fear of contradiction that she had genuine interest in educating other ponies, whether they wanted it or not, that I found rather endearing, despite having forgotten most of what she said.

What little I do recall, and must therefore be the only parts that were in any way relevant to the proceedings, was that Ponyville had in fact two militias. The first were the Everfree Rangers, the fellows in the green uniforms and armed with those overly long muskets; it would be more accurate to call them monster-hunters than militia, numbering only about thirty in number, made up of ponies all across the shires that bordered the Everfree Forest, and whose sole purpose was to keep the monsters of the Everfree firmly inside the Everfree. However, in times of emergency they could be relied upon to take up arms in defence of Ponyville and the surrounding lands from marginally less-monstrous enemies. They were, by virtue of having at least some measure of training and experience in using their weapons, the most competent and reliable of the militia. As Granny Smith had said, her ‘pappy’ had indeed founded them when Princess Celestia had granted the Apple Family that scrap of land that would one day become Sweet Apple Acres. Of course, the Everfree Rangers back then simply consisted of members of the Apple Family old enough to pick up a pointed stick, but since then had grown with the village to become the dedicated unit of professional monster hunters standing to attention before me.

[Blueblood is half-correct, in that the Everfree Rangers were indeed trusted with dealing with creatures that could become a danger, but misses the fact that the bulk of their duties involved acting as firewatch, due to the chaotic and unreliable nature of weather within the forest's boundaries. A blaze could easily force out the more dangerous forest denizens, with Ponyville being right in their path, and rain not always being a convenient and viable method of containment as it is elsewhere. The Rangers were thus instrumental in keeping the surrounding lands safe by ensuring the stability of the creatures' natural habitat.]

The second lot were the large, ill-disciplined mob of peasants armed with the shiny new muskets that Filthy Rich had bought for them. As with all of these local defence volunteer groups, they were either ponies too old or too young to enlist or those engaged in vital war work, and in this case it was mostly farming. These ponies spent a few hours every evening dressed up in uniforms, practicing with muskets, and going on patrol to hassle ordinary ponies they deemed to be ‘suspicious’ and therefore must be Changeling spies. I had to remind myself, as I walked up and down those lines and regarded the peasants standing there dumbly, that their purpose was to slow down the enemy and buy time for the professionals to swoop to their rescue, but as we carried on that thought started to feel less and less reassuring.

“How many rounds a minute can they fire?” I asked Twilight Sparkle, once her twilecture had wrapped up.

“Oh, I think it’s three,” she said, though her voice indicated that she was just as sceptical of that claim as I was.

“That is the standard as set by Princesses’ Regulations,” I said. “I will have to see that for myself later.”

“I’ll organise a demonstration!”

The overwhelming majority of the ponies who lived in Ponyville were earth ponies, of course, with unicorns, pegasi, and one alicorn making up a small minority. As a result, the militia had merely lumped the unicorns and the pegasi in with the earth ponies to make organising things easier, which, while not actually being the tactical genius ponies seem to believe I am, I correctly assumed would impair them from fulfilling their assigned niche as dictated by Equestrian military doctrine. Some of the better flyers amongst the pegasi had, however, been organised into a ‘crack platoon’, as their commander, Rainbow Dash, had put it. They were simply the ponies of the weather team and any other pegasus deemed to be somewhat capable of flying well enough for combat. Now, civilian weather ponies had proved their bravery in Virion Hive, and indeed I would not be here to write down these reminisces were it not for them throwing themselves into the gas-soaked skies filled with the enemy’s swarms, yet there were less than thirty pegasi in the militia, and they would have to contend with an enemy entirely gifted with the use of the air.

The soldiers were growing restless as we made our way through their ranks; it’s a challenge for anypony to remain perfectly still for any period of time, but it’s even more of a challenge to see a vast swarm of the enemy advance directly upon one’s position and not do the sensible thing and immediately flee in terror. After all, that was the point of all of this drill, at least in part, and their seeming inability to accomplish this hardly boded well for when they would finally face the enemy. They shuffled, twitched, stretched their hooves, and looked around, which were all things that would have driven Sergeant Major Square Basher to the heights of apoplexy. I could also sense the anxiety of my accompanying entourage as they followed, especially Princess Twilight Sparkle, who seemed to have taken this exercise as something of an incredibly important homework assignment that I, taking the position of a stern teacher in this analogy, was about to mark. If I didn’t know better, I’d have also said that her frequent expositions on the history of the Ponyville Militia was also a mechanism with which she employed to keep her stress from bubbling over into a full meltdown.

We passed one pony. He was a young stallion, not quite old enough to officially join the military but apparently old enough to pick up a musket and defend his village, and as I walked by he decided that this was the appropriate time to commit the most cardinal of all sins and speak while at attention. “Sir!” he called out, stopping me mid-walk. When I turned to face him, affecting the same sort of look that one would give if he had admitted to sleeping with one’s mother, he continued: “We are ready to die for Equestria! For the Princesses!”

He looked rather pleased with himself, as though this display of patriotic fervour was going to somehow impress me. It did not. I directed my look to Sergeant Major Applejack, who took a few seconds to interpret the meaning of said look.

“Now, Book Mark, you know you ain’t supposed to talk,” she said, as though admonishing a puppy that had befouled a rug.

I was about to carry on, but I swiftly decided that this was the perfect opportunity to impart a lesson of sorts. Filthy Rich’s peculiar display earlier seemed to demonstrate a certain inability in these ponies to take the threat as seriously as they truly ought to, and the sooner that I disabused them of that notion the better.

“Are you truly ready to die?” I asked.

He puffed out his chest and stood as tall and straight as he possibly could. “Sir, yes, sir!” he barked. Some ponies make a lot of unnecessary noise about making the ultimate sacrifice, and they are typically the ones who will abandon that thought the moment the time finally comes for them to make good on that grim promise.

“That’s a bit counter-productive, don’t you think?” I said.

This Book Mark fellow pulled a face. “Sir?”

“Dying for your country and your Princesses, I mean,” I continued. “That’s precisely what the enemy wants you to do.” I stepped closer to him, and he flinched somewhat from my approach. Then, raising my voice a little so more would hear: “The Changelings are a few days’ march from here, and until help arrives you are the only line of defence between them and everypony you love. I have seen what the Changelings do when they occupy a pony settlement, and believe me, it does not make for a pretty picture. You, Private, and your friends are what stands between your family and their enslavement. Your Princesses don’t want you to die for them, they want you to kill for them. You are going to violate our most sacred natural law, ‘do not kill’. Do you understand, soldier?”

That seemed to have scared him, and throughout my little speech I could see the slowly-developing understanding of what he had just signed up for and all that it entailed begin to appear on his face. The speech wasn’t a patch on anything that Square Basher could come up with, but I didn’t think that I could get away with quite as much swearing in front of the Princess of Friendship here, but it would seem that I had conveyed the message as clearly as one could. This whole affair inspired memories of those first few months of the war, when nopony took it with the seriousness that such a grave state of affairs truly required. Though the military had learnt those painful lessons, civilians had not, and isolated from the same circumstances that forced out the incompetent and the glory-seeking fools, save for the occasional enemy raid in the more populated areas, they still clung to those old ideas -- that it would be easy, quick, and glorious.

From there we wrapped up the inspection; I had seen enough and wanted to get this next part over and done with quickly, not least because I was still terribly hungry. The militia was dismissed, the ponies filing off to do whatever it was they did at this time of day, and I was escorted inside the castle and led through the winding corridors to wherever this meeting was to be held. Twilight Sparkle attempted some small talk, but I had to convey that I was certainly not at all impressed with the state of the militia and so I gave only short, blunt answers until she understood the message. Eventually, however, hunger got the better of me, and as we trudged up yet more stairs I asked if I could have some lunch.

“Seriously?” blurted out Rainbow Dash. “You’re thinking of food at a time like this?”

“Never plan military operations on an empty stomach,” I said. Then, to Twilight Sparkle, “Princess Celestia told me that, and who am I to question her?”

I was not above invoking the name of her beloved mentor to get what I wanted, and more often than not it worked beautifully. She instructed Spike to bring me something from the kitchen, and he only made a small complaint that was quickly dismissed when Twilight bribed him with some gems to snack on too. However, by that point we had reached what was ostensibly the throne room. It was, as all throne rooms are, designed to be imposing, as a reflection of the power and authority of the pony whose flanks fill the throne itself. Rather smaller than that of the Two Sisters in Canterlot, of course, but certainly grand enough with its incredibly high ceiling. I noted with some measure of foalish pride that it was also smaller than my own in the Sanguine Palace. However, very unusually, it was not arranged as one would expect; at its centre was a large circular table upon which was a spectral map of Equestria, and six thrones, each bearing the cutie mark of the Element Bearer who occupied it at their heads, were seated around it. It looked more like a needlessly elaborate dining room than a throne room, and with the table being round there was no ‘head’ here; I assumed the Tree of Harmony had sought to remind Twilight Sparkle that when it came to the Elements, at least, she was merely one amongst equals, and knowing her as I did she would have agreed.

One pony was already there, going over the various documents scattered on the table like autumn leaves. He was a unicorn stallion whose visage was familiar but I was struggling to place. His coat was orange, with white hooves and a white patch on his muzzle. He wore spectacles and a cape decorated with stars, and when I imagined those spectacles at the bottom of a toilet and the cape pulled over his head and tied tightly around his horn his name finally made itself known in my mind.

“Spotburst!” I called out. “Fancy seeing you here.”

The stallion’s left eye twitched and he grimaced. “Sunburst,” he corrected, and then added a quick, “sir”.

“Wait,” said Starlight Glimmer as she trotted around me, “how do you know each other?”

“We were at Celestia’s school together,” said Sunburst. “We were in the same class, until Prince Blueblood left.”

I was expelled, but I kept that to myself; I didn’t fancy everypony knowing that I didn’t graduate high school, though given where I was I would be safe in assuming that at least half of the ponies present hadn’t either. We were also in the same class because I’d been held back a year or two, which was another detail I kept to myself. “Heavens, how long has it been?” I continued, getting a little carried away with nostalgia for a far happier time in my life. “Good to see your acne finally cleared up. Do you remember when I used to shake you down for lunch money?”

Sunburst swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah, I-I remember,” he said. “I don’t know what you did with it, being a prince and all, you didn’t really need the cash.”

“Oh, I used to throw the coins at the professors and blame somepony else, usually Twilight Sparkle. Some of them even believed me and put her in detention. Can you imagine Princess Celestia’s personal student in detention? It was all in good fun, though. Do you also remember that song my chums and I used to sing as we carried you upside down through the dormitories before throwing you in Princess Celestia’s koi pond? I think it went ‘Spotburst, Spotburst, greasy, greasy, Spotburst!’”

It was at that precise moment when I realised that nopony found my anecdotes as hilarious as I did. In fact, everypony present stared at me with mixed expressions of utter revulsion and horror, especially Starlight Glimmer, whose scowl of utter disdain meant that she finally looked the part of a commissar; she looked as though she was considering how to re-arrange all of my internal organs into an attractive piece of modern art for display in some nouveau riche pony’s particularly ugly mansion. Embarrassment, an emotion that I am not particularly familiar with, welled up within me, and I suddenly felt very warm in what was otherwise a rather cold throne room.

“It was a long time ago,” I said. “You know what foals are like. After all, Spot- Sunburst wore a cape to school, so who can really say who is to blame here?” The judgemental silence, which were accompanied by more accusatory stares, indicated that nopony was buying that excuse. “Well, I’m sure there’s a friendship lesson in there for all of us, but might we deal with the more pressing matter of the Changelings first?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Twilight, as she trotted around me to take her place at her throne. I might have hit a nerve there, and if I hadn’t sunk any chance of sharing a bed with the Princess of Friendship again when I embarrassed myself in the morning after the last and only time, I truly had now. I was about to follow when I felt a small tug on my sleeve.

It was Spike, and he was offering me a plate of hay, which I presumed was the cheapest thing that they had in the palace’s pantry here. He beckoned me down with a claw, and though I wanted to simply grab the meal and then kick him away like a hoofball, I’d already tarnished my good name by excitedly talking about my bullying of a pony I could now safely assume was somehow everypony’s friend, so I resisted that understandable urge and dipped my head down to his level.

“You know,” he said, and I found very quickly that his breath stank, “Sunburst graduated from Celestia’s magic school at the top of his class. He’s a really powerful unicorn who can cast ninth level spells like Power Word: Kill and Time Stop! You might want to go and apologise to him before he casts Meteor Swarm on your head, Prince.”

I hadn’t considered that, but in fairness I hadn’t had much time to fully explore the ramifications of my actions some ten years ago or so, especially given the rather more pressing matters to attend to here. Besides, aside from saving my hide from meteors falling on my head, I suppose expressing some remorse over my prior treatment of him would be the grown-up thing to do. Furthermore, perhaps having such a powerful unicorn on our side, alongside Twilight Sparkle of course and Starlight Glimmer if her stories about casting forbidden spells were true, could make up for the deeply severe deficit caused by the apparent incompetence of the local militia here.

It was on precisely that matter that we needed to discuss, and rather urgently. I took the plate of hay from Spike, briefly inspecting it for anything that he might have added to poison me, but it appeared that good sense had overridden his strange, one-sided feud with me and it was simply what it appeared to be, if perhaps a little stale. Carrying it with me, shovelling portions of it into my mouth with my magic as I went, I joined the rest around the table.

There were quite a few of us there, so we had to bunch up a bit around this map table, which, like every other map table, had bits of paper scattered all over it. There weren’t enough seats either, so most of us, including me, had to stand. The stylised projection of Equestria on the table was still visible around the massed piles of paper, with Mount Canter and Canterlot poking out amidst the barren plains of paper. I spotted Ponyville quite easily on the map, because a representation of my cutie mark was circling over it.

“So, this is the map that summoned me?” I asked nopony in particular as I approached it.

“Oh, yeah,” said Rainbow Dash. “Whenever there’s a friendship problem in Equestria it makes our cutie marks light up, then the map shows us where to go to fix it.”

“Does it do it often? It seems rather presumptuous and inconvenient.”

“I’m more confused why it thinks a Changeling invasion is a ‘friendship problem’.”

The prime spots around the table next to Princess Twilight Sparkle were already taken by Starlight Glimmer and Sunburst, leaving me having to take a position between Applejack and Pinkie Pie. The latter of which, apparently having quickly gotten over her reaction to the revelation of how much of a terror I used to be as a foal, greeted me with a cheerful smile and a perky, “Hi, Bee-Bee!”

“Prince Bee-Bee, if you don’t mind,” I said. I was about to respond with a similar contraction of her own alliterative name, but when I quickly realised what that would come out as I refrained.

“Thank you all for coming,” said Twilight Sparkle, apparently keen to get this meeting started. Spike hopped up on the table itself, sat down, and started scribbling notes. “This is a grave threat to Ponyville, possibly even to Canterlot. Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood has been sent here by Princess Luna herself to help us organise the defences of the village.”

[Copies of Spike’s notes are available upon request from the Royal Archives. While thorough, they are accompanied by his idiosyncratic commentary on the subjects discussed and on some of the participants of the meeting. He had also drawn an unflattering caricature of Prince Blueblood, complete with stink lines.]

Applejack lifted her hoof in the air. “I ain’t questioning the Princess’s judgement,” she said, “but why did she send just Prince Blueblood here?” She then turned to me, and said, “No offense, but we’re going to need more than just one pony to help us defend the village from a horde of Changelings.”

She had a point after all, one that was universally acknowledged by everypony present save Filthy Rich, who said, “I believe she only sent him here to witness our militia’s victory over the enemy.”

The expressions on the faces of everypony else gathered around the table reassured me that nopony else was convinced by his nonsense at all, and at the very least I could rely upon saner heads, for a given definition of ‘sane’ as far as Twilight Sparkle and her friends were concerned, but all present seemed to be too polite to point this out. I gave Starlight another look from across the table, expecting her to do what a commissar is supposed to do and put him in his place, but she merely pulled an apologetic face and remained silent.

“A regiment is en route,” I said, deciding that the best thing to do was to simply ignore the fool for now. “It will take a few days for them to arrive. However, the militia may have to defend the village alone should the enemy attack before then.” I looked over the mess of papers in front of me, trying to look as though I knew what in blazes what I was doing by furrowing my brow in concentration. “The map, please,” I said to nopony in particular, and Applejack obliged by passing the requested item to me.

It was not a military map, of course, for until that day the cartographers had little reason to create such a detailed map of this rather empty part of Equestria. However, the one that was provided to me, apparently intended for tourists judging by the array of ‘interesting’ facts about the village and recommendations on sights to view and activities to do, sufficed for what I needed to do, which was pretending that I was the competent commissar that everypony seemed to think that I was. Therefore, I made a big show out of carefully examining the map.

“Where is the enemy?” I asked; that sounded like a good place to start, I thought.

“To the east,” said Twilight. “They’ve set up an encampment in the area just north of Ghastly Gorge.” I spotted the area marked out with a messy circle drawn in red ink around said area, which the blurb on the map stated was known for its stunning views and rather hostile wildlife; just when I thought Ponyville already had its fair share of monster-infested areas with the Everfree in close proximity, I found out that there was another apparently within a few days’ march. The map did not appear to be to scale, for none was provided, but it seemed that there was a lengthy march across relatively open terrain, if the map was accurate, in order to reach the village. Sweet Apple Acres was between Ghastly Gorge and Ponyville, and further to the west was the Everfree Forest, and the text for that area simply read ‘Do Not Enter!’. The railway line, which the ponies in Celestia’s War Council had believed was a potential target of the enemy’s latest daring and potentially suicidal scheme, ran from north to south.

“Any indication as to their numbers?” That seemed like another obvious question to ask.

The ponies present looked to Fluttershy, who flinched from everypony’s gaze and almost tried to hide under the map table itself. “Oh, the scouts say that there are a lot of them,” she said.

I didn’t know the militia had scouts, and at first I thought she meant the Everfree Rangers, until a small bird, likely a sparrow of some sort and wearing a tiny beret on its head, hopped onto her shoulder and tweeted insistently and authoritatively. Fluttershy translated for us: “Corporal Lightfeather says there are approximately two battalions of Changelings camped a mile north of Ghastly Gorge, led by a Purestrain. They are all armed with muskets and have field artillery. The initial sighting was at oh-nine-hundred hours, and the Ponyville Aerial Reconnaissance Squadron made two additional flights in the past two hours. They were setting up their camp, a large array of tents and temporary stores of food and ammunition. The enemy has sent scouts ahead, but has made no other offensive action yet.”

[Astute readers may wonder how said scouts were noticed at all, given the nature of Changelings, but it should be noted that a small village like Ponyville is very closely-knit, where most if not all ponies know each other to start with. Add to this unique considerations such as the local wildlife acting as scouts the Changelings couldn't plan for, and Pinkie Pie's preternatural ability to sense any new arrival to Ponyville, and one begins to understand how they had such difficulty infiltrating the town.]

“I see,” I said. I had hoped that the reports sent to Canterlot had been grossly exaggerated by an excitable and over-eager band of backwards ponies who probably saw a wandering band of goats out in the countryside and mistook them for Changelings, but alas what vain hopes I had were dashed once again. However, I was also surprised that birds could be that articulate. “This ‘Aerial Reconnaissance Squadron,” I continued, “are they all birds?”

Fluttershy nodded. “Oh yes, my animal friends were the first to spot the Changelings.”

I had to concede that it was a marvelous idea, using animals as reconnaissance; the enemy wouldn’t think to worry about the animals spying on them, and if they had somehow worked out that the birds in the air and the squirrels in the trees were monitoring them closely and returning information about their numbers and disposition there was still very little that they could do about it. They could either ignore it, and we would be privy to almost their every move, or waste far more time and resources trying to hunt down the local wildlife than any benefit that activity might grant them. The only problem that I could see was that there was just one pony who could make sense of their chirping.

“What I want to know,” said Rainbow Dash suddenly, “is how did so many Changelings get this far into Equestria?”

“And with weapons too!” interjected Rarity. “My shipments of cloth never arrive without having been opened and inspected, and those inspectors could stand to learn a thing or two about how to correctly handle cashmere, so I can’t imagine how they could smuggle that many of those vile muskets here.”

Ponies suddenly looked at me, apparently the expert on such things. “The Changeling always gets through.”

“Yeah, but this is a lot of Changelings!” said Rainbow Dash. “I mean, two battalions is like… like… uh, help me out here, eggheads.”

“Two thousand,” answered Sunburst. “Approximately. Changeling military doctrine emphasises flexibility and adaptation, which they think is hampered by a formal unit structure.”

[While this was true at the start and towards the middle phase of the war, as the situation worsened and competent officers were either killed in action or executed for ‘cowardice’ and ‘treason’ for making tactically-sound retreats, by this point any semblance of a formal structure had broken down and the Changelings simply fielded whatever able-bodied drones they could muster in ad hoc units by necessity rather than adherence to a doctrine.]

I shrugged my shoulders, pulling the bluff old soldier routine that always seems to go down well with civilians. “For this many to infiltrate past our lines, secure supplies, tents, and weapons, including bloody artillery, this had to have been months in the planning, perhaps even years, and they must have had help from within.”

“Do you mean our security services are compromised?” asked Twilight Sparkle.

“Not completely,” I said, once again making up an answer as I went along. “The Changelings have been attempting to infiltrate Equestria since this war began, and the unfortunate thing is that while we have to be lucky every single time to stop their schemes, they only need to be lucky once. The frontline is ever-shifting and fluid, our coastline vast, and the skies are limitless; we cannot monitor every single possible route into Equestria all the time, so it is inevitable that some will make it through, and the more that do the more our security is compromised. A patrol route misses a stretch of coast at precisely the wrong time, or just one box is missed from a shipment manifest, multiplied hundreds of times. We can worry about exactly how and why once this threat has been dealt with, but for now let us focus our efforts on stopping them. As I said, help is on the way, but we may have to hold out until it arrives. Have you made any preparations?”

The momentary silence that followed indicated that the answer was a resounding ‘no’, and indeed it was Pinkie Pie of all ponies who took it upon herself to take the embarrassment on behalf of everypony else present. “We kind of wanted to wait for the professionals to tell us what to do.”

That was me. Damn. I was the professional; in their eyes I was indeed the renowned war hero, veteran of a number of bloody battles against the hated enemy, the Black Prince that struck fear into the hearts of their soldiers just as it soared the hopes of ours. To be somewhat fair, this was entirely beyond anything they could have anticipated or planned for; it was not practical to train every able-bodied pony in Equestria to the level of a professional soldier nor was it possible for everypony who found themselves in charge of a militia unit, either through choice or because nopony else would volunteer, be a master strategist. The militia was intended to merely delay the enemy, should they somehow attack Equestria directly, for long enough for the real soldiers to come to their rescue. It also meant that they expected me to have all of the answers, but, as I’d found in the many times I’d had to pretend to be more intelligent and competent than I really am, which remained something of a novelty as prior to my military career I’d often have to do the opposite to get out of scandals, the easiest way to do that was to ask questions and allow everypony else to draw the conclusions from them. That way, not only does it look as though I’ve contributed my considerable ‘expertise’ to the discussion, they also feel that they’ve taken part in the decision too, which has the added benefit of them shouldering the blame should it all go horribly wrong.

“The militia look well-equipped, at least,” I said, knowing full well that was about the only thing they had going for them. “Can they be relied upon to stand and fight?”

“Oh, they’ll fight, sonny,” said Granny Smith, fixing me with a glare. “They may not be fancy Royal Guards, but they all know they’re protecting their homes and families. They’ll stand, sir. By Celestia, they’ll stand!”

Of that I had no doubt, but whether or not they would still be standing by the time this was all over was very much up for debate. After all, history is replete with examples of bands of civilians taking up arms to defend their homes from a horde of foreign invaders, but successful examples of such tend to be much rarer. Oh, they are still remembered by ponies who wish to take solace in the thought that their sacrifice meant something in the long run, if only as some glowing ideal of the underdog giving the powerful enemy a bloody nose just before being smashed to pieces, but I was quite keen to avoid such a fate. Remembrance is for the living, after all, and I intended to count myself among them to do the remembering.

“And they have the best weapons that money can buy!” announced Filthy Rich, apparently keen to be seen to be taking part. “Barnyard Bargains brand muskets and armour. Soon, the Ministry of War will be begging me for a contract!”

“‘Bargain’ is not exactly what I want to hear when it comes to military equipment,” I said, knowing full well that such contracts are typically farmed out to the lowest bidder. War is a terribly expensive business, and with a war such as the one being fought what mattered the most was that we had more weapons and equipment than the enemy. How well they worked remained a concern, as well as getting them there to be used in the first place, but those problems were less troubling when replacements were so plentiful.

“Sir, as Equestria’s fastest growing retailer of home goods, Barnyard Bargains is in a prime position to supply and sell materiel to the Ministry of War. A victory here will prove the efficacy of not only the quality of our goods but the efficiency of our model of supply.”

“I’ll send a letter to the Secretary of State for War on your behalf once this is over,” I said, both because I wanted him to shut up and because I knew full well that during this time of total war, the government had placed the profits of individual companies involved in vital war work at the very bottom of its list of priorities. Ponies of the tinfoil hat-wearing persuasion labour under the common misapprehension that war is somehow good for business; I had picked up enough from my time doing desk work in the Ministry of Supply and in the Commissariat to learn that this assumption is largely false, for not only is much of the able-bodied workforce off fighting or otherwise engaged in essential war work elsewhere, but the government will quite happily introduce measures to acquire what it needs without much concern as to profits. That, I started to understand, was his true motivation; if I felt particularly suspicious, I’d also suggest that he didn’t really want to be the militia’s commanding officer at all, but that the ponies here had granted him that rank because he’d already paid for everything.

“Fancy muskets are all well and good, Filthy,” said Granny Smith, as she drew a long bayonet from a scabbard. The ponies around her flinched as she brandished the old, rusty length of once-sharpened steel. “But when it comes down to it, our colts and fillies best be prepared to get in real close to the varmints and run ‘em through. They don’t like it up ‘em!”

“Indeed,” I said. While Applejack coaxed her grandmother into putting the bayonet away, I pressed on with the appalling matter at hoof. “We must be prepared for the possibility that the enemy will attack before help arrives.” The precise manner in which that help would arrive I decided would be left for the end. “I won’t lie, from what I have seen I wouldn’t rate the Ponyville Militia as soldiers.”

That brought a scoff from Applejack. “Well, thank you for your honesty,” she said, with a voice that was dangerously close to sarcasm.

“It’s nopony’s fault,” I continued, trying to be diplomatic here, “they’re a civilian militia and they were never intended to fight the enemy in a pitched battle like this. The best weapons in the world are useless without the training and the will to use them, and we have only a matter of days at best before the enemy makes her move. Fortunately, the Militia only needs to hold out until relief arrives.” I turned to the ponies standing before me around the table, and said, “We need every advantage we can get. You know this land better than I. We must position the Militia on the most defensible land between the village and the enemy and hold it. Where is that?”

“Here!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie, jabbing her hoof on Sweet Apple Acres on the map. “There’s lots of hills there, and from Applejack’s barn you can see for miles and miles all around!”

“I’ll have to see it for myself,” I said, rather surprised that Pinkie Pie of all ponies was proving to be the most tactically-gifted out of everypony present, but I supposed the best military minds out there tended to be on the eccentric side, and none were more eccentric than she. “But it would make sense to station the militia there. Preparations to fortify it must be made immediately.”

“Now hold on just a minute,” interjected Applejack. “That’s my family’s farm y’all are talking about, and y’all want to start digging trenches all over our fields and orchards?”

“I would not suggest such a thing if it did not contribute to the defence of this village,” I said. The rather primitive map here did indicate that there were hills all over this side of Ponyville, with Sweet Apple Acres occupying much of that area. I had certainly picked up enough over my years in this stupid job that taking the high ground was generally a good idea, generals were obsessed with it after all, and these militia ponies needed every single advantage that they could get should the enemy make their move soon, which, if they weren’t entirely without wits, they would do sooner rather than later. “However, if there is more suitable defensive land between the village and the enemy, I would like to hear about it.”

There were a few other suggestions from the assembled ponies: Fluttershy suggested that the Everfree Forest itself would be an excellent place from which to hide and fight a guerilla campaign, but that would involve abandoning the village and was deemed unacceptable except as a last resort; the village itself could be turned to our advantage by luring the enemy into its streets and using the old buildings to blunt the enemy’s superiority in numbers, weapons, and training, said Starlight Glimmer, but again the ponies felt queasy about the potential damage to their homes in the ensuing fight; and Rainbow Dash, backed up by Filthy Rich, posited the suicidal idea of sallying forth to meet the Changelings on the field and defeat them in open battle. I do not think that I need to explain why the last one was shot down by clearer heads almost immediately.

“Now, Applejack,” said Granny Smith, once we’d gone through the increasingly outlandish ideas and returned back to the subject at hoof, “the Apple Family and Sweet Apple Acres has always endured, through Timberwolves and Diamond Dogs and those ponies from the tax office my pappy chased away with the pitchfork. Whatever may happen, we’ll rebuild.”

Applejack sighed. “Y’all got a point,” she said. “That don’t make it any easier, but we gotta do what’s necessary to protect this here village.” The apple farmer looked to me, and carried on, “Pinkie’s right, from our barn you can see all of Ponyville and the countryside all around for miles and miles. Y’all can do what y’all need to do with it, so long as we’re all still here to fill in the craters and re-plant all the trees.”

And bury all of the bodies, I thought grimly to myself.

“Thank you,” I said, though really it ought to have been the other way around. The enemy were hardly going to care about such niceties as defending the rights of property and all that, and the sooner that the ponies here understood that and could overcome their own squeamishness, the better for them. “There will be a chance that the enemy will attempt to go around Sweet Apple Acres to take the village, however, when help arrives we will be able to fire upon them. That said, we may need to settle in for a brief siege should they attack early. See to it that the farm is stocked with provisions and ammunition.”

“But can’t all Changelings fly?” said Rainbow Dash. “What’s to stop them going over the farm?” She helpfully demonstrated the point by swinging her right forehoof in a wide arc over her left.

Once again, ponies looked to me for the answer. “They still need to land,” I said, once again making up said answer as I went along and hoping that it sounded convincing to the room full of amateurs and the one, other ‘professional’ here. Twilight Sparkle nodded, which reassured me that I was on the right track. “Changelings cannot maintain sustained flight and fight to the same extent as pegasi, their little buzzing wings aren’t built for that. Besides, if surrounded we form square atop the hill and skewer any drone that comes close.” I looked to Sergeant Major Applejack, and asked, “Can the militia form square?”

“They can form any shape y’all like,” she said cheerfully, which meant ‘no’. “Triangle, circle, square... Uh, help me out here, Twilight.”

“Make sure that they’re drilled properly so they can do it in their sleep.”

It was going well, thought I, and surprisingly so; they had, after some prompting, identified a sensible, defensible spot where they’d make their stand, and I liked to think that I had successfully impressed upon them the severity of the situation at hoof. Granted ‘well’ was a definition that had to be tempered with the acknowledgement that these ponies were untrained civilians, but by and large most of the ones gathered around here seemed to be getting the hang of things now that I was there to look imposing. While the other ponies bickered about the minutiae of organising the defence and how to handle the large number of civilians in the village, I took care to observe Filthy Rich, who had grown rather quiet; indeed, much of the old swagger of a seasoned salespony had evaporated as it must have inevitably dawned upon him that this was rather serious, which, I hoped, would make what I had instructed Commissar Starlight Glimmer to do to him much easier for all involved.

The rest of the meeting went by without much in the way of further incident for the most part, as we largely dealt with the tedious details of going over the numbers and provisions that the militia possessed, which allowed me a chance to finish off the rather monotonous lunch that I had been served. I would not say that I felt at all confident in our chances, and as Princess Twilight Sparkle bored ponies to the point of inducing sleep in Rainbow Dash as she explained the interesting modifications that she’d made to the bayonet lugs that would later become socket bayonets, I continued to turn over the possible escape routes in my mind. Immediately hopping on the next train to Canterlot was the first thing that came to me, and though I tend to dismiss the very first idea as being much too obvious, it occurred to me that it was precisely the opposite of what anypony expected the great and heroic Commissar Blueblood to do.

It was as the meeting was starting to draw to a close that Princess Twilight Sparkle asked me in what form the expected help was going to come sweeping to our rescue, and I had hoped that this awkwardness could be avoided by Princess Celestia sending her a letter via Spike explaining everything. That, to my annoyance, had not come to pass.

“Is it the Night Guards?” asked Spike, butting in before I could make a response. “They’re so cool with their dark armour and those bat wings!”

“Pfft, they’re overrated,” said Rainbow Dash, clearly still bearing a not-unjustified grudge over her mistreatment by them before.

“I do hope it’s the Prism Guards,” said Rarity. “Those uniforms are so elegant and so very chic! And Colonel Fer-de-Lance was such a delight when I met her at the party here a while ago.”

This was getting a bit out of hoof, so I cleared my throat loudly and said, “The Guards Regiments are still at the front, but don’t worry, a crack regiment is mobilising as we speak. They will be here in a matter of days.”

“The 403rd Catering Division?” posited Pinkie Pie. The bizarre outburst threw me off, and I blinked vapidly at her. “What? They served Princess Celestia with distinction during the Great Cake Craving of ‘92. Mr and Mrs Cake earned medals in that campaign.”

“No, Pinkie Pie,” I said. Then, puffing my chest out as though I had a degree of pride in what I was about to say, “They are a regiment of disciplined, trained, experienced soldiers, each a veteran of the fiercest battles of the war, led by a ruthless and dedicated commander who will stop at nothing to achieve victory.”

“Who? Who! Tell us who!”

I might have over-egged it, but it was too late to come back now. “The Free Changelings, under the command of Odonata.”

The silence that followed was so total, so perfect, that it seemed to muffle ambient sound, like a veritable black hole. The ponies gathered around the table wore identical expressions of complete shock; that empty, vapid expression as the equine brain gives up on organising the facial muscles as it tries to parse the information that it has just received. Jaws hanged loose, eyes widened and almost bulged out of their sockets, and slowly brows furrowed as the full understanding of what I had just said began to dawn upon them, some faster than others.

Princess Twilight Sparkle, being the most astute amongst their number, was the first. “Changelings,” she said, her voice pitched up slightly to make that half a question.

“Free Changelings,” I clarified.

“I read the former Hive Marshal was putting something together,” she said, still in that curiously calm tone. “Well.” It was more of a sigh than a word, really. “This is going to be one tricky friendship lesson for the whole of Ponyville.”

“That, I imagine, is why the map summoned me.”