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Hinterlands

by Rambling Writer

Chapter 1: 1 - The Fugitive

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She never used safety gear, never dreamed of it. She could scamper up and down cliff faces at speeds that would make fliers jealous. She wasn’t a unicorn, so she couldn’t use magic, and she wouldn’t if she could. She could climb near-vertical cliffs as if they were sidewalks. She could find sure footing on the smallest ledges, ledges most ponies wouldn’t even notice. She didn’t even need any hoof wrappings. She was, although nopony knew it but her, one of the best equine climbers in the world.

And yet, Polar Sun wished she were a mountain goat.

Halfway up the cliff face, she leaned against the rock, licking at a tiny outcropping, tasting the salt deposit. Mountain goats had taught her how to notice them and how many nutrients she could get from them. Mountain goats had taught her how to get to them. Mountain goats had taught her literally everything she’d learned in the past ten years, and almost everything in the five years before that. But there were some things they couldn’t teach her simply because she wasn’t a goat. Their hooves were designed differently than ponies’, with pads that could provide traction and two toes that could be moved independently for extra grip. No, no matter how good she got, Polar Sun would never be as good as a mountain goat.

“Quit complaining to yourself,” Polar said as the deposit began to run dry. “You’re not a mountain goat-” Lick. “-you’re a pony-” Lick. “-and you’re a sunblasted good climber in spite of it.” Lick lick. Polar talked to herself a lot. There wasn’t anyone else to talk to, most of the time. She didn’t always talk back, though.

Polar glanced west. Far and away, the Crystal Palace and its towering spires were silhouetted against the half of the sun still above the horizon. “Got done at exactly the wrong time, didn’t I?” Too late to go for one last bit of salt, too early to be able to turn in immediately once she got back home. Ah, well. Maybe she could get up early tomorrow to waste time.

“Or maybe I need to get some new books.” (Polar’s monologue often shifted between inner and outer.) “Stop by the Crystal Empire next moon, go to the used bookstore, hire a unicorn to get them up here…” She had the money. The mining over the past year had been good. And what else was she going to spend her bits on? “Doctors, maybe.”

She shook her head. “But this ain’t the best place to be thinking about all this.” She reached up and hooked her hoof around a tiny spur, pushing the sole onto it. The maneuver was slightly painful, but it was almost impossible for her to slip, what with the hoof hooked around the rock. “Right. Good grip. And…” She reached up with a lower leg, patting at the rock until she found a good spot, repeated, and pulled herself up. She did this all in seconds, striding up the cliff face so easily that if you rotated the world ninety degrees, she might as well have been walking down a street. The rock was cold against her bare hooves, but she didn’t notice that anymore.

By the time she reached the top and the narrow band of open earth between empty space and the forest, Polar was breathing heavily. She was spry for a mare her age, she wanted to say, but she was still a mare her age. It was only a matter of time before living up here was impossible for her. “But not yet. Five years, maybe. But not yet.”

She sat on the ledge and looked at the land below her. “So where would I move?” The Crystal Mountains sprawled around her and curved around the world, around the Crystal Empire with its supernaturally green pastures, to the horizon and beyond. The mountains, white with snow, rose into the sky like a city made of the teeth of some colossal predator. Their slopes were a mixture of steep and gentle, forbidding and welcome, barren and forested, as varied as the whole world. She’d known all those slopes, once. But half a decade of living here all by her lonesome had slowly chipped away at Polar’s memory, and now she only knew the surrounding twenty miles or so.

“Not the Empire.” That much was certain. “Too easy.” Most maps claimed the Empire was the only civilization around, but maps were some of the filthiest liars Polar had ever known. There were towns (usually centered around mining) scattered here and there, little hamlets that Canterlotian bigwigs deemed not “real” communities. Most of the landmarks Polar was familiar with simply didn’t exist, as far as maps were concerned. But Polar knew them, knew some ponies in some of them. Maybe she’d go to one of those and work until her heart gave out. “You’re real good at tempting fate, you know.”

As she was standing up and working the crinks out of her joints, Polar heard another voice, semidistant. It was a constant stream of various four-letter words. She huffed. “Ponies these days are so uncreative with their curses,” she muttered as she walked along the ledge. “The whole wide world of language before you, and you constantly use the same words over and over again? Pfft.”

She saw the pony after about half a minute of walking, still illuminated by the sunset. The other pony — a unicorn mare, but Polar couldn’t make out much else in the dimming light — paced back and forth next to the cliff a few times, looked over, cursed uncreatively again, and went back to pacing through the thin snow. She was wearing decent clothes for this weather, but Polar felt she looked lost or out of her depth.

Polar cleared her throat. “Hey.”

The unicorn yelped and scrambled into the trees, her hooves kicking gravel into space. She ducked behind a tree, paused, then leaned back out. After a second, she grinned nervously. “Um. Hey.” She walked back out from the trees and rubbed her mane. “I, uh, didn’t know anypony else was out here.” She was trying and failing to sound confident.

“Well, I am,” Polar said with a shrug. She glanced over the cliff and half-grinned at the unicorn. “You thought this pass was gonna be easier, didn’t ya?”

“U-um…” The unicorn coughed. “It’s, I… just kinda-”

“I’ll be. I barely know you and I already know you’re a terrible liar.” Polar laughed. “Don’t worry, it happens to the best of ponies.” In truth, Khuuramch Pass, as the yaks called it, wasn’t a pass at all. It was a very prominent notch in this part of the Crystal Mountains, easily visible and quite inviting from both sides. Once you approached it from the south, though, you were in for a nasty surprise: a cliff, eighty degrees steep in some cases, rising hundreds of feet from the ground and not easily recognizable as such from a distance. Coming from the north was even nastier, since you couldn’t see just how steep the cliff was until you were on top of it and almost completely through the notch, forcing you to turn back. With the exception of a few travelers a year, ponies trekking through the mountains turned around and found an easier way. Polar clicked her tongue and nodded back the way she’d come. “It’s getting dark, so let’s get inside. C’mon. My house ain’t far.” A gust of wind made her tug her coat closer to her. “And stay away from the edge, will ya?”

“Heh. No problem there.” The unicorn trotted after Polar, sticking to the trees. “So, you live out here?”

“Sure. Look at the view.” Polar gestured at the valley, drenched in sunset orange.

“But… why?”

“Why not?”

“You’re miles from everypony, you need to work hard every single day just to stay alive, you barely get any company.”

Polar grinned at the unicorn. “I said ‘why not’.”

“…Oooh. Gotcha.”

Darkness was beginning to well and truly fall by the time they reached Polar’s house. One story and one large room. It was made of rough-hewn rock and looked like a strong wind could blow it over, but Polar was proud of it. She’d built it herself, mining the stone and cutting the wood and even (when she’d still been able to do it) refining the few bits of metal in it. It’d stood for over a decade and was one of the best houses she’d ever lived in.

Polar opened the door; the room was pitch-black. She started patting down next to the door, trying to find her matches. For a second, she wished the unicorn would provide some light to help, but then she found the box. She quickly struck a match and had the oil lamps lit. Everything the light illuminated was very rough and completely functional; even the “floor” was just beaten-down ground. “Just sit anywhere,” Polar said, gesturing vaguely. Not that there were many places to sit.

“Ehm. I… Thanks.” The unicorn looked around the room, shuffled from hoof to hoof, and slipped her saddlebags off. Now that the light was better, Polar examined the unicorn more thoroughly. She was a sort of pale green, like frosted grass, with deep blue eyes. Her clothes, thick furs, looked old and worn. Her saddlebags were bulging and her mane was hidden beneath a hood. A small knife was strapped to her fetlock. At first glance, she seemed a perfectly capable adventurer. But something about the way she stood, the way she looked around, the way she held her legs a touch too closely together, made Polar think otherwise. It was like the unicorn was a yuppie who’d heard about this “mountaineering” thing, decided to give it a whirl, and researched it perfectly — but now that she was out and about and actually experiencing it, she was feeling aches and pains in places she hadn’t felt them before and was learning for the first time that, wow, mountains can be cold. Hopefully, she’d toughen up before the Frozen North took her.

The unicorn examined the room a little more, glanced at Polar, and did a double-take. “You’re, uh… You leave out here wearing that?” Indeed, Polar’s clothes were limited to thinnish leathers for mobility. Cold, but she didn’t mind.

“I don’t need much more,” Polar said with a shrug. “You hungry? I ain’t got much, but I can spare some things.”

“Ehm. Sure. Thanks.” But the unicorn glanced at the door again.

Polar opened up a flimsy-looking cabinet and began rustling through the piles of food inside. “Ain’t much food out here-” She pulled out a small salt lick and set it on a small, stained table. “-but if you know where to look-” A large bowl of lichen, scraped away from rocks beneath the snow. “-you can find-” Small chunks of willow bark. “-quite a bit.” A bundle of shrub roots. She paused, then added, “And sometimes I splurge.” A bag of apples, bought in the Crystal Empire. Even out here, you could indulge. “You hungry?”

The unicorn’s stomach growled. “No.”

“C’mon, take your coat off, stay awhile. You ain’t gonna be doing much traveling this late.” Polar pulled the table into the middle of the room and tapped it. “And your misplaced tough-mare attitude ain’t impressing anypony out here, so stop acting all self-reliant.”

The unicorn glanced at the door one last time, then muttered something under her breath. “Fine.” She pulled down her hood, revealing a short, dirty-gray mane. Tentatively, she sat down at the table. “No… no plates?”

“Nah. What’s the point?” Polar silently thanked the fates that she’d managed to keep the pony inside. Only idiots would try to travel the pass this late. She began devouring one of the roots like it’d tortured her family to death. “Name’s Polar Sun,” she said once she’d swallowed. “Yours?”

“Ehm… Amanita.” Amanita sniffed at the bowl of lichen, hesitantly tried a spoonful, then dug in vigorously.

Polar had more questions for Amanita, but they could wait. As good as salt deposits tasted, they tended to be light on actual nutrients, and she was hungry.


Bitterroot figured she knew the answer, but she held up the bounty poster for the bartender anyway. “Have you seen this pony?”

Gilina examined the poster for a long moment, then shook her head. “Nope. Sorry.” And it wasn’t a “I need something brassy to refresh my memory, if you know what I mean” type of sorry, but genuine. Bitterroot knew Gilina too well for that.

“How about this one?”

“…Nope.”

“This one?”

“…Nuh-uh.”

And they went through four or five more ponies like that. Bitterroot wasn’t surprised; just because fugitives sometimes came to this town because it was off the map didn’t mean one was here, now. She wasn’t chasing any bounties, anyway. This little village, Ironforge, was just where she went once every one or two years to get away from it all — you couldn’t get much further away than off the map entirely — and she was simply checking to be sure no big names were trying to take refuge there. So after all the negatives, she said, “Thanks, anyway. A beer, please.” She slapped a few bits on the bartop.

Gilina nodded and within seconds, a full tumbler was sitting in front of her. It was funny; Bitterroot could go to some of the most upscale bars in Canterlot, places that spent more on the flooring than she made in a year, ask for “a beer”, and get a verbal essay on the Importance of Choosing the Proper Beer, so wouldn’t you like to be more specific? (No, she didn’t, she just wanted some sunblasted alcohol, you stupid-) But here, outside Equestria, in a ramshackle building that barely qualified as a bar, she could ask for “a beer” and get a fitting drink in a moment, no questions asked, in spite of the decent selection of different beers. And it’d taste halfway good, to boot. Bitterroot took a sip and nodded her thanks to Gilina. It was all there was time for before Gilina had to move on to the next customer. The Sinopia Stein was busy that night and there was no time to talk.

Not that Bitterroot would’ve wanted to talk, anyway. Her last job had been aggravating and she just wanted some alcohol to relax. She stared into her almost-full glass and swished the beer around. “Why’d you run, you little idiot?” she muttered, half to herself, half to the little idiot. The foal had just been stupid. The heir to some medium-big-time noble title, almost but not yet of age, had committed petty theft in Canterlot and skipped town while on bail (she’d hid out in her family’s manor, as it turned out) while her family used connections and other technically legal means to stymie attempts by the Guard to find her. After all, she was an Important Pony who couldn’t go to jail. (Theft was apparently a-okay, though.) Eventually, an aggravated lieutenant had come up to Bitterroot and hired her, as somepony outside governmental channels, for a foalnapping. Using those words, too. At least you couldn’t fault him for beating around the bush.

After the longest, mane-pullingest week of her life, Bitterroot had eventually gotten the young mare back to Canterlot (in a sack), but the press had had a field day. Simply put, nopony came out of that looking remotely pretty. Not the mare, not the family, not the Guard, not the lieutenant, not Bitterroot herself. The lieutenant had given Bitterroot immunity for the abduction and an inflated bounty in exchange for absolute silence. She’d been only too happy to comply and promptly left Equestria. Whatever the Canterlot Post was saying about her, she didn’t know and she was perfectly happy not knowing.

Bitterroot stared into her half-full glass and swished the beer around again. The situation had left a bad taste in her mouth that hadn’t even dimmed slightly yet. For all the princesses’ bleating about “friendship” and “harmony”, ponies could be remarkably backstabbing. Heck, the presence of the Royal Guard proved that; if nopony ever tried to do anything wrong, the Guard would never need to serve any law-enforcement roles. And that was within Equestria, the supposed heart of friendship and harmony. Out here… “lawless” was, perhaps, a bit strong. But the land was definitely wilder. Maybe it was because Bitterroot didn’t know many ponies in the Frozen North, but the backcountry of the Crystal Empire had always seemed more of a free-for-all than Equestria. In this land, it seemed friendship would only slow one down, so ponies — people — fell into an every-mare-for-herself mentality, fighting for survival against the weather and each other, and to Tartarus with anyone else.

Of course, her living relied on that self-centered mentality to a certain extent, both within Equestria and without. She wasn’t sure she should go around pointing hooves.

Bitterroot stared into her empty glass. Did she want another? …Not yet, no. Not alcoholic, at any rate. Definitely something non-alcoholic, maybe something frui-

Behind her, the door to the bar banged open. A habit of staying out of notice made Bitterroot reflexively pull into herself. She nudged her glass into position to take a look in the reflection before she realized what she was doing. She twisted around on her stool.

Two mares, an earth pony closely followed by a pegasus. The earth pony, a dark purple specimen with cold blue eyes and a long, pale mane, was clad in furs that seemed a touch too large for her from the way they hung off her slim frame. She wasn’t carrying much; that was left to the pegasus. The pegasus was strongly built, like she’d been lifting weights all her life. Her coat was a dark yellow, her red mane trimmed very short. Her leather clothes were roughly made and looked like they’d been padded with cotton, but they fit. A silk scarf, blue, was wound around her neck and muzzle. Her every movement was taut, like she didn’t want to be there, and her green eyes were oddly flat. She bore the earth pony’s bags and weapons, with an arquebus visibly bumping at her side. A stupider setup Bitterroot had never seen in her life; why have the weaker pony as the pack person?

Lacking anything better to do and not that thirsty, Bitterroot watched the pair. The pegasus kept looking at the earth pony, who examined the room intently. She didn’t move from the doorframe, not even when a drunk attempted to leave.

“ ’Ey!” protested the drunk loudly, swaying on her hooves. “Yer, yer, yer, yer iiiiiin… m’way!” She waved a shaking hoof. “Gitaway! Git!”

The earth pony fixed the drunk with an angry glare. “You git.”

Perhaps it might’ve worked on a sober pony, but the drunkard barely noticed. “I mean it!” she yelled. Heads were turning towards her. “Git outta m’way!”

“Busy.” The earth pony didn’t move.

“Alright! Yer askin’ f’r it!” The drunkard swung haphazardly at the earth pony.

It was a feeble blow, one anypony could’ve dodged. The earth pony snapped a hoof up, deflected the punch, and on the recoil, jabbed the drunk in the throat. The drunkard gasped and bent over, wheezing. The earth pony casually strolled past her and, once the pegasus was out of the way, bucked her out of the bar and into the early evening light. A couple of ponies raced outside to make sure the drunk would be okay in this weather, but everypony else went back to however they were wasting time. Except for Bitterroot.

Her eyes narrowed as she watched the earth pony and pegasus take up seats at one end of the bar. A strange pair. The pegasus seemed to be some sort of mareservant, for some reason, and her wings looked stiff. The earth pony walked with a stride that reminded Bitterroot of businessmares: “don’t mess with me” given locomotive form. And too proud to know when acquiescence could solve a lot of problems. Probably a control freak.

Gilina headed over to them to ask what they want. Bitterroot couldn’t hear what was said over the noise in the room, but the earth pony waved her down. She dropped a pile of bits on the table and they exchanged words. Gilina pointed at Bitterroot. The earth pony nodded and left her stool to sit next to Bitterroot. “Bartender says you’re a bounty ’unter.”

Well, one thing Bitterroot knew for sure: this wasn’t a fugitive. To approach a hunter that openly was flirting with disaster, something she’d taken advantage of a few times in the past. What the heck, she had nothing to lose and Gilina had thought this pony was okay. “Sure. Why?”

“I am, too. Chasin’ a perp. Wanna split a reward?”

And Bitterroot sat up just a little bit straighter. She’d been planning on a quiet week outside Equestria, but if there was a target out here anyway, she had no reason to be on the job. However- “Lemme see your commission first.” Always be sure your partner was legitimate, just in case. An urban legend in the fugitive-recollection business was a serial killer who claimed to be a bounty hunter to other hunters, captured a supposedly escaped pony with them, then murdered target and hunter both. Bitterroot didn’t believe a word of it, but it couldn’t hurt to check.

“Sure.” The mare dug a somewhat wrinkled certificate out of her saddlebags and laid it in front of Bitterroot. Bitterroot skimmed it, taking in everything she needed to know. Artemis (that was what the paper said her name was) had been licensed by the Royal Guard in Canterlot (check one), complete with wax seal (check two), and the license expired in a few years (check three). When she examined some of the finer details — the thickness of the lines in the border, the phrasing, all that jazz — it all checked out.

“Looks good,” said Bitterroot, pushing the paper back. “Smooth entrance, by the way.”

Artemis looked a bit puzzled as she tucked the paper into her bags. “Hmm?”

“Oh, it was just so quiet and subtle and unassuming. Your targets’ll never imagine you’re here.” Just because Artemis was a real bounty hunter didn’t mean she was a good one.

Artemis’s lip curled. “She ain’t ’ere,” she said contemptuously. “I been trackin’ ’er ’cross the tundra for weeks an’ she’s gone already. I need ’elp.”

Bitterroot leaned over and nodded at the pegasus. “What about her? Isn’t she with you?”

“Hmm?” Artemis looked over, then shrugged. “Yeah, but Gale ain’t the ’elp I need. We know each other too well. I need somepony to give me a kick in th’ tail when I need it. An extra set o’ hooves an’ eyes. Somepony ’oo don’t think like me. Like us. New perspective, y’get?”

Simple assistance. Easy enough, Bitterroot figured. She’d done it several times before. “Sure. I’m in. So, who-”

“What was that I hear? You need a tracker?”

Bitterroot twitched and whirled around. A unicorn had somehow snuck onto the seat on Bitterroot’s other side and was watching them with an easy smile on her face. Her colors were earthy: brown coat, messy black mane, gray eyes. Bitterroot privately wondered what it took to get a unicorn with that coloring. She was wearing a thick cloak; no bags, but she could’ve been staying in town. Something about her voice seemed strange, like she was using Trottinghamian phrasing with a Canterlotian accent.

“Leafy Trace,” said the unicorn; she preempted Bitterroot’s next question by pulling out her own neatly-folded certificate from an envelope in a pocket and displaying it to Bitterroot and Artemis. “Greatest tracker this side of Mount Aris,” Trace continued. “Special talent. I could follow an owl on the wing through a midnight blizzard while blindfolded.” She said it without a hint of boasting.

Trace’s license looked just good as Artemis’s. Better, even, since it was still clean (definitely cleaner than Bitterroot’s own). Bitterroot was inclined to believe her based on her easy confidence alone. Artemis, on the other hoof, didn’t seem impressed. “Lemme see your mark,” she scowled.

Trace rolled her eyes and pulled her cloak up, exposing her flank and her cutie mark: a set of hoofprints under a magnifying glass. “See? Pray tell, why would I lie about that? The instant my tracking was subpar, you’d abandon me in the wilderness.”

“I’m fine working with her,” said Bitterroot. “The more, the merrier, right?”

Artemis snorted and rolled her eyes. “Fine. Anyways…” She pulled out another, dirtier, much larger piece of parchment. This one was weathered, stained, a quarter unlegible, like it’d been dropped in mud during a rainstorm, but still obviously visible as a bounty poster. It showed an unassuming unicorn, one who wouldn’t look too out-of-place at a gathering of Canterlot socialites: Amanita. Bitterroot went to the charges and twitched: necromancy. She didn’t read much further; she both didn’t want to (necromancers could perform their most grotesque rituals away from prying, authoritarian eyes out here) and didn’t need to (she’d never heard of a necromancer who wasn’t up to no good).

Bitterroot did a double-take when she saw the reward. Six hundred thousand bits. She looked closer, just in case- No, it was what it appeared at first glance. Six hundred thousand bits, dead or alive, no strings attached. “Stars above,” she mumbled. That was practically more money than she’d made in her life. Even splitting the reward, she’d be walking away with a bulging bank account.

She showed the poster to Trace, who whistled. “Hoo, baby,” said Trace. “Lotta lucre, even for necromancers. Definitely going after her, for that price. What’d she do?”

“Long story, tell ya later,” said Artemis. “But if you wanna nail ’er, we need t’ leave soon, while we still got daylight.”

Trace was already off her stool. “Be back in thirty minutes, max. I require my tools of the trade, see?”

“ ’S fine,” replied Artemis. To Bitterroot, “You?”

“Same time, same reason.” Bitterroot laid a tip on the counter and galloped out the door after Trace. Already, her heart was racing. It’d been a while since she’d been on a wilderness marehunt.

Next Chapter: 2 - Collateral Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 45 Minutes
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