Case File Four: Trot Wainier

I knock, carefully, on the door, the rattling of my hoof on wood reverberating through the quiet Manehattan district. The once bustling district of Marelem is now a ghost town, old newspapers flick through the streets in the light breeze, this district still declared, ‘unstable,’ by local security forces.

Not that any of this perturbs my next interviewee, however. Despite constant attempts to remove him from his home for his own safety, he has flatly refused the local security forces from down the sight of his weapon. The door is opened, a middle-aged mare greeting me with a smile and an opened door. I take the offered entry, returning the smile as I pass. She directs me to the living room, where my interviewee is waiting. He rises from his armchair, shaking me vigorously by the hoof. A cup of coffee is offered by the mare, which I decline. Coffee never was a drink I enjoyed. Instead, I find a mug of tea thrust into my hooves, and I graciously accept it, before taking a seat on the couch.

Trot Wainier shifts in his armchair, getting himself comfortable once more. His dark blue mane shows more than a few signs of greying hairs, his face, itself, beginning to sag. Yet, between the wrinkled crows feet, are two eyes, incandescent with the heat of a younger pony. I would expect nothing less from the ex-Captain of the Royal Guard.

“So, Quill Stroke, is it?”
“Yes, I talked to you on the phone a little while back. You said you were there at Haltergate?

Trot chuckles, nodding his head. “Haltergate, Sandineigho, Fort Hope. I was there for hay-near every campaign in the war.”
“Wow, you’re quite the vet then? How long were you in the Guard before the war started?”

Trot strokes his head with a hoof, muttering to himself. I can only imagine that, like many other ponies, ‘before the war’ for him is a distant dream.

“Gotta have been...two years. Still pretty much a greenhorn in that aspect. Well, if I had a horn, that is. If I did have a horn, I wouldn’t have been at Haltergate.”
The implications of Trot’s musings intrigue me, and I feel the need to have them elaborated on.
“So, only earth ponies were at Haltergate?”

“Oh, no, the unicorns were there. Our superiors, half a klick away from the fight. And the peggies were just as high up in the sky. Nope, it was us dirt-kickers that had to face Zack muzzle-to-muzzle.”

“What about weapons, were you well equipped for the challenge?”

Trot outright laughs at this question. I give him a moment to recollect himself before we continue. “Buddy, we were equipped with everything Auntie Cel stashed in her gun closet. We had battlecarts, peggies with combat rigs in the air, full battle dress and best of all...Hoof Warrior.”

“Hoof...Warrior?”

“Experimental. Top-of-the-range. Best thing since sliced oatmeal, et cetera, et cetera. Hoof Warrior was this visor you mounted over your muzzle. It gave you a marker for other ponies in your squad, peggy-eye view of the battlefield, mark-ups for enemy positions, everything. You, as a hoofsoldier on the field, could see everything going on around you. Woulda helped a tonne back in the Gryphon Wars.”

“Were you in the Gryphon Wars? They were before my time, and I’ve heard little about them.”

“That’s because everypony only worries about the last war. By the time you’ve perfected the art of fighting a war, it’s over, and the next one starts. I was there as a fresh recruit near the end, at the battle of Hatchlings’ Eyrie. It was only a year after we’d beat those stubborn rumpholes into a surrender, that Zack showed up, I was still green as grass when it came.”

Trot takes a slug of his coffee, and I feel obligated to drink some of the tea I was given. It’s cold, my attention diverted to Trot’s story much more than his wife’s tea-making skills.

“I was with Barn company, we had Apple company and Canter company supporting us. Canter was all cavalry, lined up right along the edge of Haltergate, facing out towards Manehattan and Fillydelphia. Four-hundred good stallions...bucking wasted.”

“Your superiors ordered a cavalry charge straight at the Zeds?”

“My, ‘superior,’ was Clear Gaze, Keen Eye’s son. He got promoted to General right about the time Zack was picking his dad outta their teeth. Poor bucker wanted only one thing, every Zack from here to Central Park, dead. He half got his wish, I guess.”

Trot calls through for another coffee, and as if she were waiting on standby, his wife appears, two cups balanced on a hoof for us both. I gratefully accept the refill, and we return to our story.

“Sorry, caffeine keeps me running. I burnt out my youth in these campaigns years ago, ain’t got much left of it. Anyway, where was I?”

“Canter Company. The cavalry charge.”

“Alright, gimme a sec. Yeh. Clear Gaze was heading the show, his plan woulda stopped a horde of gryphons right in their talony tracks. For Zack? Not so much. Haltergate was at a fork in the road, the Inter-Equestrian twelve and twenty-three highways from Manehattan and Fillydelphia, converged into one road before leading into the town. We’d have Zack bottlenecked and trussed up like a turkey. Canter was meant to charge right at Zack, cut up a bunch of their vanguard, then pull back while we, in Barn company, rained hay on them from two ridges running each side of the road. That was my job, the squad markspony. We had these new crossbows straight outta testing, things fired flaming bolts quicker than a parasprite’s lunch.”

“What about Apple company, and the pegasi?”

“Apple were at the town entrance itself. They were the smallest company, fifty ponies, Canter was four hundred, Barn being about two hundred. Apple was stuck in the path of Zack, there to pick off the odd survivor from our gunfire. We fired from the left and right flanks to cut ‘em up. The peggies were in strafing and bombing mode up the entire highway, cutting down what was coming to us as much as possible.”

“Sound like the perfect battle strategy, what went wrong?”

“In a war, you don’t kill other ponies, Quill. You kill vermin, infidels or demons. You can’t kill other ponies unless somepony makes you believe they ain’t ponies, that they’re worse than you...sub-pony. We had ponies stumbling up the highway here, average Stallion Joes and Filly Mays in their birthday coats. Some were dressed up in business suits, some in hospital overalls, some still in their school uniforms.”

Trot swigs another lump of coffee down his throat, shivering as the heat burns him on the way down.

“Canter charged in, full-bore. But what was a bottleneck for Zack, was a bottleneck for us too. Canter scrunched up like a scrim, the point of cavalry is to rush through a group, but they hit a wall of Zack...and that’s when the horse apples hit the hay.”

“They were blocked in, by their own ponies?”

“Exactly. Canter had bunched up twenty ponies deep in this highway road, ones at the front lost momentum and Zack just reached out and dug in. Poor buckers behind ‘em saw all this, started backpedalling. What you got was the least organised and bloodiest cavalry retreat Equestrian history’s ever suffered. We got ordered onto the ridge to fire at everything we saw, there was Zack lying on the floor pinning some of Canter company down while others swarmed on top, and even more just climbed right over them all.”

“How about Barn, did you manage to thin them out enough to re-counter?”

“Didn’t have time. Somewhere, in a tent a half-klick away from there, Clear Gaze was balling his orders. Soon as we tried to start keeping Zack back, he called in the peggies. We ducked behind the ridge while they strafed, bombed and generally bucked Zack up. Thing is, you can’t just kill Zack that easy. No, we had heads and half-bodies flying into the air around as. Crawlers actually fell straight onto somepony on my platoon. We shot it off, but it had already sunk its teeth right into him. That’s when I switched over to Hoof Warrior’s Pegasus-Eye View, to check the road behind the ridge.”

“Was it clear, did the bombing keep them back?”

“Hay no, it did not. Zack was pouring through, more than ever! Right onto Apple who were about as prepared as a bunch of schoolfillies. They broke ranks, at least the ones who survived did. I zoomed out the view, and I’m not afraid to admit it, son. I pissed my pants right there and then.”

“What did you see?”

“We were dealing with hundreds at the fork there, but Hoof Warrior showed them all the way back to Manehattan! A long, bucking snake of Zack from Haltergate all the way to Central Park. Fillydelphia was still coming, I could see the little tentacle still trying to connect to the Manehattan horde. We weren’t even dealing with half of it! Even more were just walking across country where we couldn’t funnel them in and chew them up. Clear Gaze cut the comm right then. Radio was jammed with screams anyway.”

Trot finishes his coffee, mumbling to himself as I can only imagine he considers his story. I give him all the time he needs, and he eventually returns to it after a moment.

“Comm was down, Hoof Warrior straight after. We got ordered to retreat to the town square, bulk up with the battlecarts rolling out to meet them. They poured every moonfire spell we had, every crossbow bolt was fired, every combat knife flung into the horde. Nothing. They swarmed over the battlecarts, stallions inside were safe, but hardly in a comfortable position. We pulled further and further back, Zack eating up the ground and the soldiers defending it. In a matter of an hour, we lost Haltergate.”

“How did you escape the capture?”

“Battlecart that was pulling out. Half my squad was left, we jumped in and hightailed it on the General’s orders. Zack had eaten up the town, I never saw the bomb go off. I was still in the battlecart, busting our rumps outta that hayhole. Blast buckin’ tipped the thing straight over, only thing keeping us safe from the fire was the armour plating. We crawled out; cart was busted, but nothing was left to attack us. I’ve never met anypony who was there at Haltergate. There’s something beautiful about the alicorn bomb. The wrath of Auntie Cel’s sun sat right on an enemy position. Haltergate, the IE-highway and near five hundred soldiers, were nothing but a blaze. But I could still see them. A dark shadow through the smoke, that big-flank horde of Zack...still coming, after all that.”

“So, did you end up in Cloudsdale after all this?”

“Eventually, yeh. Right after Clear Gaze put a bolt between his teeth, and we gave a breakdown on what the buck he did wrong.”

“What did he do wrong? Why didn’t these tactics work for this war?”

“Because Zack ain’t a pony, he ain’t even an animal. He wants to chow, he’s gunna chow. Hay or high water, he’s eating tonight. You blow off his limbs, you slaughter a hundred of his buddies in front of him, you cut off his bucking head...he’s still chomping. Ponies don’t fight to kill, nopony starts a war with the idea of killing every single one of the enemy. You both wave your sticks at each other, and whoever has the biggest scares the other colt. Shock and awe, but Zack don’t care about that. Our entire mantra, from a fearsome cavalry charge, to raining fire on the horde, was to shock and awe. When Zack shrugged it off, when they walked right through the fire and stepped over their fallen comrades. Well, they shock and awed us right back.”