SBMS116

Reconstruction afterwards suggested that the attacking force caught one of the rampart posts with a ranged attack, something that left frost burns and debilitated if not disabled the victim. It's the only explanation how the enemy got across the water-filled ditch and up the stone-clad embankment and rampart without either pony getting a lance-head into them. Whatever happened, we lost the earth pony mare Close Furrows and stallion Pear Pit before any response arrived on scene. One of them got off their screamer, probably Close Furrows. The enemy also tripped the screamer circuit embedded in the discord's seam along the edge of the rampart, so that the rest of the section holding the northern ramparts got a proper earful with plenty of warning.

The ponies at the posts east and west of the incursion converged on the alarm, and the survivor of this initial response reported seeing a white figure on the far edge of the drainage ditch, emitting some sort of light-flash in the direction away from her approach. Two similarly white figures were spotted coming over the edge of the compromised fighting position, and the struck ponies' section-mates tried to rush the enemy before they could become established on top of the wall.

The survivor later described the death of her partner, the unicorn stallion Silver Stroke, at the hooves of the attackers, and implicitly, the likely deaths of the two from the eastern post – Hohenfelden, recruit-buck from Rennet, and Heureux, a jenny-recruit from Hydromel. Their weapons were caught by the snow-white assailant in its rack. Something flashed from the horn of that dead caribou's rack, along the length of the survivor's lance and Silver Stroke's claymore. Both armsponies staggered from the effect of the 'flash', and the survivor described a sudden, terrible weakness, as if she was on the third night of double-shifts without rest or sleep. Silver Stroke was less affected than the survivor, and managed to power through the attack and put his blade into the indeterminate undead, which staggered, and then smashed Silver Stroke down with a blow from an iron spike affixed to its hoof, probably an exaggerated set of climbing spurs that most likely was the method of how they got up the wall so quickly.

The two attackers killed all but the survivor, and probably would have ended her as well except for the arrival of the rest of the section, including the section's bowmare, who began pumping the contents of her quiver into the two attackers at a distance. The undead were more alert and active than the usual run of ghoul or revenant, and managed to avoid most of the bolts thrown at them by the unicorn, whose surviving section-mates darted forward under her fire to pull back the fallen. One of these was caught a terrible blow by one of the enemy, and the earth pony stallion Kale Green fell insensate, never to regain consciousness. We're not sure if the physical contact was what eventually killed him, or if it was simply the untreated blow to the head. It could have been either.

The survivors of the initial response fell back to contain the incursion, forming small skirmish lines under the direction of the corporal of the guard, Forlorn Hope. As additional reinforcements arrived on scene from the Bride's Gate and the Road Gate, this line solidified, holding the flanks of the penetration along the wall. The third attacker made it over the wall in this pause in the engagement. The two lines along the edges of the incursion left a wide gap across the roadbed of the Road, if the enemy chose to take this opening.

The opening closed with a clap of thunder as the Spirit arrived upon the scene, driving into one of the whitened undead things, and tumbling with it against the edge of the fighting platform. The collision set off a series of detonations, black fire and white mist spraying in all directions. The two unengaged undead charged each skirmish line, and broke the lines as if they were made of string and spirit gum. Forlorn Hope, earth pony mare and new-minted corporal, died trying to hold the western skirmish line. The eastern line scattered without any further fatalities, the thing having been slowed and weakened by a number of bolts driven into it by the bowmare, and a few lance-heads embedded in its dead flesh by the scattered defenders.

The two undead, having scattered their mortal opposition for the moment, turned back upon the Spirit savaging their fellow, and gnawing at its throat with her terrible sharp teeth. Witnesses report that their flashing attacks scattered the substance of the Spirit, like a wave breaking through mist. The Spirit disencorporated, and vanished from the blood-splattered fighting platform in a freezing mist. The downed thing failed to rise again, having been damaged sufficiently by the Spirit's attack to remove it from the fight.

The main reaction force arrived from Dance Hall in this second pause, and the line was re-formed around the fallen fighting platform, enclosing the two dead things and their fallen fellow in a half-circle. When the two standing things tried to break the line, they discovered the Company standard-bearer with his war-lance couched and ready for their charge.

The unwounded dead thing exploded in a freezing ball of hail and freezing mist, showering the platform and cringing Company ponies alike with bone-shards and unspeakable half-frozen viscera. The Spirit reappeared out of this second freezing mist, grey-white and raging. Having lost all control or compunction, she fell up on the solitary remaining thing, and tore it to shreds while Corporal Cake and the survivors of the engagement stood in a iron-bound circle, containing the incursion to the last. The Spirit was uncontrollable, striking wildly at any pony who approached her in her frenzy. The ponies of the night-shift gave her space, and watched as she fed.

The Spirit fed well upon whatever in nine Tartarian hells those things had been. Later speculation among knowledgeable Tambelonian natives offered up the supposition they had been a particularly dangerous necromantic creature known alternatively as barrowgasts, harcelers, or gefallenegeister. Legend holds that their creation required the horrible and bloody sacrifice of an entire hamlet worth of ponies as part of a fell working or ritual by a master-necromancer. We put out a call to find if any such villages had been destroyed anywhere in the northlands in recent weeks, and if so, the circumstances and any speculation that might be available about the how and the why.

What we were certain of, in the aftermath, was that they had been a particularly expensive diversion, a distraction. You'll note that my name and those of the witches' coven, appear nowhere in this narrative of the repulse of the barrowgasts from the northern ramparts.

This is because a second, more subtle attack was launched at the height of the fighting on the northern ramparts, against the heart of Dance Hall. And I found myself in the centre of that disaster.