They said the tide of battle had a way of changing a pony. That the same one who goes out into the field never comes back. Not fully, anyway. They said that the things you see when you leave the pretense of civilization behind, when it’s down to pony against pony in a battle of brawn and wits -- they don’t let you go back to the way things were. They also said you would catch a simply dreadful cold if you didn’t put your scarf on.
They said a lot of things.
Sweetie Belle watched a puff of her breath disperse into the cold air before her face as she sat in the confines of her cell. As she tucked her hooves into her jacket for warmth, she peered over at the two guards posted in front of her. They were young soldiers, she thought, greenhorns without a lick of exposure to the real thick of things. One of them certainly couldn’t help being a viridian unicorn, but his cohort had no such excuse.
Slumping against the back of her cage, she gave a reflective sigh and closed her eyes. Defeated. Captured. Dishonored. Imprisonment gave one a lot of time to do battle with one’s personal demons. How had she let it happen? How could she have let her friends down? Could she stand to look them in the eye anymore, or they hers? Had that one snowball really hit her when she swore it had only grazed her mane and that Namby Pamby was being totally lame? Such were the deliberations which plagued the young world-weary soldier while she wasted away as a prisoner of war. Her roving mind found itself presently snatched from its course as her attention is drawn elsewhere -- the two jailers.
They were nervous, she perceived. They had recently fallen quiet and begun shifting uneasily. For a moment she thought she could perceive one of them staring at something past the iron bars which encased them all. The other seemed to have caught onto this, and spoke up.
“Don’t be such a baby!”
“W-what?”
“You keep lookin’ over there!”
“So?”
“Keep your eyes on the prisoner.”
“Well, the scout’s down and we don’t have anypony to watch the hill,” he protested. The scout had, in fact, sustained an injury in the last sortie and had been taken back to headquarters to have said splinter extracted.
“Nuh-uh, you’re scared. And it’s not like they’re coming back anytime soon. We sent ‘em running last time! Their lieutenant was running so fast she even dropped her bow!”
“Huh? No she didn’t, I saw her.”
While one of the sentries pointed out to the little strand of magenta fabric laying out in the white snow beyond the prison, Sweetie Belle felt a smile tug at her mouth, a spark of rejuvenated light in her emerald eyes. Ever so slowly, she lowers her head, the rest of her body flattening against the ground...giving the pair of spectators far behind her a clear view of the preoccupied guards.
*PAMPH* *PAMPH PAMPH*
It took the two fresh-faced sentinels a moment to become aware that they were presently white-faced with snow before promptly keeling over to the ground, unsuspecting victims of ambush, one of them muttering something to his cohort to the effect of the insidious military tactic being totally unfair.
Applebloom and Scootaloo dashed out of the cover of the tree, slipping past the sturdy iron bars of the prison (an admittedly flawed design on behalf of the clearly civilian inclinations of its engineers), not sparing a moment to high-hoof their companion before the three made a rush for the field. “The guard change!” squeaked Sweetie in warning as the trio stumbled out onto what amounted to the heart of enemy territory. Indeed, a sleepy-faced pegasus had just ambled into sight from behind headquarters, and had just enough time to duck away from the snowy projectile hurled his way by Scootaloo before frantically crying out, “Prison break! Prison breeeeak!”
It began in the blink of an eye. The Crusaders, ignited by the passion and fury of the reunion, stormed forward as eyes turned their way from all directions. Snowballs to the right of them. Snowballs to the left of them. Snowballs in front of them. Soared and crashed, stormed at with slush and ice, boldly they galloped and well, into the jaws of Death, against the time of the Bell, galloped the three.
Sweetie Belle kept her head low as the march of the crusade bore forward. The sting of the cold, the lump in her throat, the sticklers in the enemy ranks protesting that they had “so hit her just then,” none of it mattered anymore. Applebloom stuck her head towards the ground as they raced past her bow, ever grateful for its faithful service as a decoy, and with her teeth snatches it and a mouthful of dirty snow, heedless of that nasty numb feeling she would have in a few moments. Scootaloo was no longer Scootaloo, but Commander Hurricane, charging valiantly at the head of the pack into the thicket of enemy lines, her wings beating furiously against the whipping wind, upon which she would totally be riding if she could fly. Poets in the hours to come would give her an A for effor. So little had been said between the three, yet were there volumes communicated as they charged onward in tandem.
Scootaloo was the first to cross the line into friendly territory. Immediately, as Applebloom and Sweetie Belle respectively followed suit, the youngest of the Apple siblings took up the heavy yoke of negotiating for a tactical ceasefire to diffuse the oncoming breakdown of order among the militants.
“We’re safe now, y’all can’t get us!” the young diplomat opened the floor.
“What? Nuh-uh!” came the poignant retort.
“Yeah huh! Y’all can’t hit us while we’re in the base!” The filly clung to one of the bars and stood on the circular floor of their gyrating base of operations to drive their point home.
“What?!” cried Snips in rebuttal from the other side, “But you did that to us!”
Alas, it was a fair point, and the valiant filly stammered for a moment to find a reply. Fortunately, the ever eloquent and refined Captain Pipsqueak, a privateer hired to support the crusade, called out, “Yeah, but it was totally brilliant!”
There was a general muttering of begrudging agreement from among the opposing party.
Snips cast a glance of suspicion about the enemy file, but raised his hoof in concession. “Alright! In light of our enemy’s daring.......twominuteceasefirego!” The colt dashed back towards the opposite end of the theatre of battle, the rest of the company following his example after processing the order. The Crusaders exchanged satisfied looks amongst one another before adjourning to the headquarters to organize the counterattack.
“Fall in, soldiers, hustle!” barked Commander Scootaloo, standing up on the center of the base and waving a hoof in. Admiral Bloom and General Belle flanked her as Captain Pipsqueak (the officer-enlisted ratio was admittedly dismal under these circumstances) saluted from among the small number of young ponies which huddled together to listen in. Scootaloo gave a nod to the colt, yielding the floor. “Report, Captain, who do we have left?”
“It’s not good, Commander,” chirped the high Trottingham accent, “three more fell in the last volley, and Twist got checked out early for a dentist appointment. All’s left is us, Featherweight, Truffle, and uh...that colt who brought the fake helmet.”
“I’m Thorin Oakenhoof!” came a voice from the other end of headquarters.
Scootaloo gave a solemn nod, stony eyes scanning over the crowd of haggard soldiers. She took in the looks that were returned -- cold, tired gazes, hungry for sight of the end. But lo, only in death or the impending recess bell was there an end to war. But through the fear and uncertainty in their eyes, she saw a fighting spirits. Brave, noble colts and fillies desperate to march back to their families with heads held high, who would rub their classmates’ faces in it the next day.
“Alright, listen up!” barked Scootaloo, descending from her plinth to the level of the soldiers, pacing around the base. “The enemy will be coming for us in...thirty seconds ago! I want every one of you behind a tree, a fort, on top of the sli- er, the mountain, anywhere you can get a good shot at those...uh...horseapples!” The crowd silently flinched a bit at their leader’s profanity, but listened as she continued with rapt attention.
“You are not colts! You are not fillies! You are soldiers,” she had been pacing with head aloof, but now rounded on the company with a challenging smile, “and I want to have lunch with every one of you this time tomorrow, DO YOU HEAR ME?”
A high-pitched cheer from the militia voiced compliance. Off in the distance, the town bell struck high noon.
