Fallout Equestria: Sola Gratia

Chapter Christmas: In the Meantime

“I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life, freely.”

The Buckner Tavern made for a decrepit establishment, to be sure. Its walls held ragged tapestries and peeling posters that, more often than not, served to cover up sections of rotted-away wood, and to protect from the cold, thought it was not as if a paper shield had ever done anypony much good. The counter was more likely to leave you splintered than it was to keep you steady, and had softened from decades of swashed cider and the necessary repairs endured after drunken brawls.

The place was no more torn and aged than its owner and bartender, if I were to tell it true. The building was long across to compliment its countered bar, behind which were stacked rows of empty bottles in every color– most cracked, but still labeled to announce a wide variety of inebriants- and a large window to the kitchen, which hadn’t been used to allow the passage of food for more than a century by my guess.

Now, despite its entire right side having collapsed and the biting gusts of night air that came uninvited, my tavern was bearing witness and host to yet another half-minded argument. I had missed a lot of this day’s dramatic happenings, but could see that I would get no reliable explanation tonight, not from this worn collection of survivors, judging from their state of weary mind and weary heart, and from my sales.

“You’ve gotta be kidding! Dey saved our asses!”

“Saved us!? From what exactly?” Rawhide always spoke straight out of his ass, but when his scruffy beard was wetter for cider than for spit, well, that’s when you really had to steer clear of the old bastard. “From mah recollection, train done pulled outta town long before these two little birds came waltzing in asking after their damned Sheep herder!” I had learned to ignore this kind of rabble, and kept my voice well and clear out of the great debate between the drunk and delirious.

“So dem fires just put theyselves out?” Jon was an idiot, plain and simple, but he stood by these new girls with more passion than any other… which didn’t say much for their side of the argument. “An’ all ‘em bleeders? How’d the Doc patch up their holes if t’wasn’t with these darlings’ supplies?”

The girls were awful quite, considering. It was clear enough which was in charge… Hard to believe, but clear. Wasn’t often you seen a mercenary leading the pack, but this black-eyed, brown-eyed mare seemed to have no employer in sight. Maybe that’s who they’d come a’poking around for.

Rawhide wasn’t going to let this die, and I had to admire the newcomer’s wisdom and restraint in sitting quite. Red definitely had experience with rambling alkies, and stayed cool to spite the heat. “How many dead, Jon? How much’ve we lost? You call our asses saved?” The little lavender dove, on the other hoof, looked terrified for all the attention, hostile or otherwise. “We’re dead in the water… whole settlement’s in smoke, not long until the raiders come sniffing ‘round for they scraps.”

“Raiders already come… and gone in one hell of a hurry.” Jon could be dumb as a post, likely was, but this point would still hold up. The merc had done more than you could ever expect from her kind, and the littler girl hadn’t seemed so soft when that monster shotgun at her side was letting itself be heard at the Viper’s heels. The both of them had done quite enough to break the expectations following them.

“We’d be pickings, weren’t for them.”

“That’s a load of bull and you know it. No raider runs from a mare. They saw us men with our knives and eyes burnin’ up for the wreckage we used to call Buckner and turned they tails faster than a shot.”

“It took more’n a couple shots to get ‘em hightailing, from what I saw.” I added. Business would not be quite so smooth had those raiders come, so my stake in the argument had needed planting. “Most of which came from these two.” I tipped the glass, empty save for my cleaning rag, and got the same from Red. The other one had been ignoring her warm milk like someone who knew where it came from, which was fine by me, seeing as I was making no profit due to the ‘tab’ I’d offered them.

You treat the ponies that folks call ‘heroes’ right and it serves well as most any other promotion, and all of the survivors needed something a lot stiffer than Brahmin milk. Lot more profitable, too.

“Aw, whadda you know, Sixsmith?”

“I know that you tend to shut yer braying’ mouth when the watering well begins to sing a tune against yours.” This got a strange kind of giggle from Red, a kind of filly’s sound that took me and the others by great surprise. She covered It up with a draw from her complimentary cider, but we’d heard it well enough. “How ‘bout you just’ let ‘em drink in peace?” I said, before someone could comment on it.

“For free?” Ah, so that was his problem. “While I sit here, a tired old veteran, and pass my last few bits on to a lecherous cider-bully?” What Rawhide had in determination: he wasted on inconsistency, as his mood was running wilder than a Buffalo with something to prove. “Sixsmith… my dear friend, my fellow in this living death we all must make our way through.” He could get pretty filly-sophical too. “Would you have these pretty young smoothskins held high above and over your most loyalest of customers? How could you be so cold? …For damn near a quarter century I’ve drunk beside you.”

“Been drunk beside me, more like.” I pushed him away with the glass that I’d been so long cleaning, accompanied by far too generous a serving of whiskey. The bastard was telling some truth, and in a place as wholly depopulated as Buckner had become today: you had to keep what friends you could.

“How many could you make a count of, Jon? How many are left?”

“Over a dozen… but that’s includin’ Rawhide and a few much too much like him.” The useless, in other words. Not to hold myself above that description. I too had been left behind, after all… along with the dead, dying and decrepit. The Coltilde had killed more than it had taken on, from the corpses I’d seen and still could see out on the street. Dark as it was, fluorescent streetlight made limp silhouettes clear enough.

That wasn’t usual. Slavers were always hungry for the greatest profit they could turn, but from what folks had been saying… from the recountations that I’d been overhearing from behind this counter…

“And what of the stories?” The girls had arrived, true to Rawhides memory, long after that black train had left, and would know of the attack no better than I.

Jon froze up, his eyes staring right through me as answer enough. “Sovereign…” he mouthed.

“Forget it.” I said, as he struggled to form another half-word. “I’ll hear it straight tomorrow, when we’re all a little less shook up.” He nodded, still staring on at the bottle racks behind me as if he’d found some fresh wound through my head to use as a peephole. “I’m cutting you loose now, Jon. We’ll be needing someone with a mind clear as water, come morning’.” The boy had been drinking as much as Rawhide… and that was certainly something to say. “Go on off and get some sleep, alright?”

He nodded again, dumbly as ever, and walked straight out of the bar, moving more like a dead man than any ghoul or mythical Sovereign soldier, exciting by way of freshly broken wall rather than doorway.

“Goddesses’ sakes…” I almost asked the mercenary what she thought of the stories folks had been stammering this bitter night, but thought better of it. The words of frightened survivors were unreliable enough when coming from their own mouths.

“Where were you?” she asked, willing to talk now that the aggression had all but run off. Most of Buckner now sat hunched over in the shadows of my broken bar, disguised as barrels or sacks of sawdust… No, most of Buckner lay bleeding on the street… blood just as dark as they, under moon-bright night clouds, a ceiling of black broken apart in bright scars of starlight. In any case, the praise and contempt for these new coming mares had gone to bed or booze, didn’t really matter what the sky looked like.

“I was here…” For a mercenary, she seemed awful opinionated, and looked at me very harshly, as if waiting for a better explanation. “Knocked cold in a little dispute over some passer-by’s tab… big ol’ buck smashed a bottle of whiskey over my head… to make it worse, the damn thing was full as full ever is.” She smiled at this, becoming a pretty little girl again. “He and his party are probably dead or taken now.”

“Sounds like you got lucky.” Her friend murmured something at this, but I couldn’t make it out. Her face was now buried within crossed arms atop the counter, a pose much familiar to me, though not so much due to warm milk. “Right.” She was apparently used to whatever muffled opinion had been expressed.

“Don’t mind me saying, but you two make for a strange couple if ever I’s seen one.” I could almost feel the little dove blushing, as if she had warmed the very woodwork of the bar. She stayed bundled up in herself, though, and Red was left to talk things over alone, as must have been common.

“Yeah, well, there isn’t much usual to the folks you’ll meet in bars.” It wasn’t rare for mercenaries to offer their services in places like this, and from Red’s demeanor I could tell that this had been more than true to her. “But…” she shot a sly, sideways glance at the mess of lavender. “We’re very happy together.”

At this, a little bit of a panic was being taken part in somewhere beneath the thick mane. I wondered why the girl wouldn’t want their relationship to be out in the open to the likes of me. Their kind wouldn’t find much protest to that lifestyle here… unless one of those overzealous religious types had come around.

“You certainly make a pretty couple.” I offered, with no intent. It had been years since I’d last chased after mares, decades even, but there had once been a time when the pair of them would have given me a few lofty ambitions. “Too pretty to be involved in this sort of business… what’re you doing in such a place?”

“We were looking for someone, but we started following that train soon as it left the Middle Passage.” Her marefriend straightened up in interest, and returned to milking her milk as she listened. “From what little I’ve heard here: I figure we ought to follow them… seems their especially interested in unicorns.”

“Sovereign… I think that’s what ol’ Jon was calling them.” I nodded, noting the stark absence of my usual horned customers. “But I wouldn’t believe anything I heard told tonight… I can’t believe it.”

“I hear you.” She bumped her glass against mine, though I had only been cleaning it. I realized that the mare was a little drunk, not to extents that I was used to, and certainly to no great length when compared to the town’s survivors, but tipsy all the same. Perhaps this had softened her up from the usual, more professional mercenary attitude to informally introduced bartenders and their questions.

Now that I was really looking at her, I could see the roses that had blossomed beneath her cheeks, and the slight lilt of head and hair that came from both exhaustion and inebriation. She wore a scrappy blue police hat, tilted back out of place until its lip seemed to be rising from the bed of fire that was her mane. She was pretty, if damaged, and I felt something forgotten stirring in my belly as I watched her smile.

“I…” I had always been made stupid by the attentions of a drunken mare, with all their friendliness and familiarity left out in a haze of whiskey… though it had certainly been a while since it had affected me so. “I didn’t catch your name… either of your names.” Something about the vulnerability of such a mare, I think, paired with my guilt as the cause of their state, left me feeling… responsible.

“Well, it’ll be good to meet you at last, Sixsmith. I’m Caliber and this fine example of the Goddess’ perfect design is Ash Ascella of Caeli’ Velum.” The smaller mare seemed awful embarrassed, and, all the same, pleased that her challenging name had been so well pronounced.

That nostalgic, sickly feeling left me, as I shook away the cloud of memories from my younger, wilder days. These mares had each other, very surely, and for once I could serve drinks without a mite of concern, except for the cost to myself… this Ascella made for a shining pillar of sobriety that even the most dangerously drunk could lean on, if only to remain upright. Red would not be needing my help to get herself bedded, which was a responsibility that, to be honest, I was quite happy to avoid.

“Hold on… Ash Ascella of Caeli’ Velum… that sounds like a Faith name.” Which would explain the milk. “You one of Cyrus’?” The buck wasn’t one to preach any kind of bigotry and discrimination, but it was strange to think that one of his flock could have gone so far as to run off eloping with a mercenary.

“Yes,” She looked me straight in the eye for what might have been the first time. “How did you know him?”

“Oh…” I said, recognizing the meaning behind her question. “That there’s funeral talk… what happened?” She plucked up tight, and just gave me a sad shake of the head in answer. “Sorry to hear of it anyways. He and I got to know one another during the Great Tribe War, after we’d gotten sallied up with some southron ghoul… Canterlot, by the looks of him, aside from the lack of Cloud leaks.”

“Let me guess: you fought on the side of one Uzmat Machk…” Red smiled, taking uncommon enjoyment in having deduced that. I had to wonder if she hadn’t earned that police hat.

“Eeyup, but we all went along our separate roads after the Zebras and Vipers had scurried off to their respectin’ hideaways.”

“It is good to have met you, sir.” The dove chirped up, perhaps realizing that we shared some common ground, after all. “Cyrus spoke of the tribe war, but he never told us that the Zebras were involved.”

“Oh yeah, everyone had thrown their hat in by the end. But when old blue-eyes paired us railway towns up with the Buffalo, well, things got a whole lot easier. Those grueling battles of the early days made way for long chases across the golden straits, and we gave those Zebra a solid boot at the flank, sent ‘em cantering out of the Plain like a bankrupted drunk from a saloon.”

It was good to have their shared attentions on me, reminded me of my first few years behind the counter, when ponies would come for both my cider and my stories, when they still saw me as a kind of hero in some respects. The rest had all wandered off, so most of the glory had fallen into my hooves, along with all the caps that glory’s worth, if only because I chose to stay local.

“If you’ve met Machk, then you ought to know that he’s got the run of the Buffalo tribe combine now, and if you’re one of Cyrus’ then you must have seen the lake house up North.” They both nodded, bobbing their heads together for both the warrior and the preacher, interestingly. As if they had been together long enough to have visited both the migrant tribe and the northern shores. “But blue-eyes, the ghoul Damascus, walked a strange path, indeed.”

“To the Middle Passage… What’s so strange about that?”

“This was many years ago, Red, and our understanding of the term ‘many years ago’ might vary greatly.” I offered to refill the merc’s glass, but she waved me away. Ascella accepted some more milk, though. “Two decades, longer even, if my count is still good.”

“But Hell was empty only a couple of years ago.” She argued, as if this trumped my personal recollection.

“How could it have been empty before your Damascus got there? I thought this place was a town?” The pilgrim made a fair point, no northern settlement sprung up that fast, not even if that old pioneer was involved… But I could tell Red did not like the line of questioning that she had just laid herself open to, not one bit. I’d never heard of any Hell or town in the Middle Passage, and, call me sympathetic; I still felt I had a responsibility to save this mare from the pitfalls that my cider may well send her stumbling into.

“I don’t take much mind about this Hell that you’re telling of. All’s I know, and I know it well, is that Damascus went north after his little war was done.” This truth served well enough to draw their attention back to me, and for it I got the rosy-cheeked image of gratitude.

“With Cyrus?”

“Nu-uh,” I shook my head. “With the Zebras.”

------------------------------------------

That bombshell set the girls silent from then on, which was a good thing seeing as my answers had just about run out alongside their questions. I couldn’t tell you whether old Damascus had painted himself black and white and started making the Zionists call him ‘Decurion’, or if he’d simply decided to start walking until the soil became sand and the always-sun drove everyone under it to the refuge of open palaces and palm leaves held by pretty, striped, dancing girls.

They mopped up their last drinks and said that they needed to be going, and I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that my words, or even the crummy atmosphere of broken walls and broken drunks that had fallen over my bar, were the reason why. Red was looking for somepony, and I honestly couldn’t tell if she was under contract to kill them or take orders from them. Either way, they were sure as shit going to be found.

Her little friend was a lot easier to understand, what with Cyrus dead. I wouldn’t have been surprised to know that all his fledgling flock had been spread across the wasteland, like baby birds caught up in a storm, and would have now have to latch on to whatever provider they could find.

Say all you want in the way of praise for the pilgrims: It doesn’t change the fact that they are easily lost. I’d never seen anyone break apart as bad as a religious type caught in the throes of a crisis of faith, not even the most quarrelsome drunkard or beaten down mare. They held what they had high, so were left dejected and scarred after losing it. Not like us regular folk, who got ourselves high to forget all the rest.

A part of me hoped that Red was using her for better things than you’d first assume, and would be making more of her than a warm body to abuse in the dark of night. They seemed happy enough in each other, and I was surprised to find myself believing that it was real: That they were together in something like love rather than lust or lucrative, contractual agreement. A part of me didn’t want to see them go.

But they did, and I found some relief in knowing that there’d been no bill for them to pay here, that I had showed them a small part of what gratitude Buckner owed. It wasn’t much, but neither were we.

“I’m taking a walk.” I called out to drooping ears. “Don’t any of you animals come climbing behind the counter!” The usual act wasn’t doing much to rouse their spirits, and I was sure – for maybe the first time in my life – that my bottles and bits would remain untouched in their guardian’s absence.

“But…” I added, the scraps of an idea forming in my head. “Milk the tap for all its worth, won’t ya?”

This drew one buck’s attention, at least. “Sixsmith?” Rawhide slurred. “Sixsmith, you’ve finally gone and grown yourself a heart! Oh, what magic is at work here in the carcass of Buckner, what wonders there are to be seen!” Whether the old ghoul was being sarcastic or serious, I’d never know.

“Don’t get too excited there, Skinfree.” These dredges had finally got to their hooves, already stumbling over to the bar for their fair share of the cider. “I’m fixing to make this the Buckner Tavern’s closing sale, 100% off of everything that we can’t take with us.” Some turned, slowly coming to terms with what I was meaning. “We’re packing up shop, boys! So grab all that you can carry… but, in return for this generosity, could you keep your filthy hooves off of my cashier, and try not to break the colored bottles?”

I could only hope that they’d listen, and so I hurried out into the night to rally up the other survivors.

We weren’t going to sit around and rot while the towns ahead were left in the same mess, and so, call it the guilt-fueled, mad ambition of an ageing bartender; we would be leaving Buckner on this very night.

This train would leave a trail of broken homes and thirsty ponies behind and, for once, I wanted to follow the thirst to some advantage that wasn’t all my own. This Sovereign was news to me, and I’d still have to find some reliable recounting of them, but damn them if they didn’t drive ponies to drink.

“Jon!: I called out, my voice breaking the eerie peace of fire and snow and blackness.

“Get over here, boy!” The pale buck emerged, rubbing his eyes like a freshly wakened colt, from the husk of his former home. “There’s been a change of plans.”

I sent the youth off to gather all who had the misfortune of surviving this night sober, those over-encumbered family mares and crippled caravaneers who could only curse their bad timing and luck. Today had not been a day for the loved or beloving, and those who had more to care for than themselves were more than likely loath to have survived it, and would do little but mourn in these skeletal houses. Whether it be a well-broken Brahmin set loose to the winter winds or a curious child left bloodied in the snow, their losses had stayed their hooves… not any fondness or love for Buckner.

It was not my place to offer a young mother, blanketed foal in hoof, a flagon of even the finest whiskey, and it wasn’t likely that they would take the offer as anything but some attempt at a new promotion. To be fair, I had ridden my lust for gold and luxury with pride and perseverance, thinking all the while that past triumphs and heroism made me deserving of this one indulgence.

Now, as violence and death crept back into my life, it was time to stow away the vice of these later years, and bear the sins of the past instead. A hard hoof turned from beating the bits out of these few, sordid characters, to driving us all on from Buckner.

A few motley groups were beginning to congregate along the rail, all avoiding whichever corpses they had known best to stand beside the snow-laced carcasses of strangers. Jon ran in a flurry of white, disappearing in and amidst the shivering few, until all fractured houses had been investigated.

I didn’t bother taking count, as I couldn’t have kept track of all these foreign faces. If only someone had told me that most of my regulars were going to be massacred in the passing of that black train, maybe then I would have made more of an effort to build more bridges than I had burned.

Now, angry housewives and fatherless children stared at me. The mothers wore nothing but contempt on their blemished faces. They knew me as the buck who had stolen their husbands away, a sower of destruction upon the value of family spirit to rival even Buckner’s mares of the night. I was at least consistent; those red-light strumpets could leave a man halfway to Calvary before his wallet ran dry, while I would always kick them to the same patch of snow come morning… or dirt, depending on the season.

Every father came stumbling back home after indulging in my services, eventually, but the same couldn’t be said for those who’d been seduced into the clutches of Cherry Cola and her girls. They could change a buck; make the very pillar of responsibility and maturity become young and stupid again. I had to wonder if any of them were still alive, as I would take any familiar face over these scowling strangers, no matter how dressed up in make-up and fake, seductive smiles.

“I think that’s all of them.” Jon said, suddenly appearing beside me. The kid could be quick as a whip, while remaining dumb as a post all the while. To say that he was a whipping post might not be taken all that well, though… Especially considering what the Slavers had done. “Exceptin’ the bar bucks.”

“I’ll handle them.” There was a moment when I considered exempting what I wanted to say next, but decided that now was not the time to hold myself back in any regard. “Help me, Jon. My eyes aren’t as sharp as they used to be… it’s difficult for me to see in this light.” The young buck peered around, already looking for someone that I hadn’t yet named. “Did’you count Cherry Cola with the dead?”

“You should be so lucky.” I was getting snuck up on a little too often for me to like tonight. Her voice was older than she, her body younger, leaving only that gray-streaked wilderness of dark red mane to set a marker anywhere near her real age. “I hear you’re responsible for this morning’s excursion… would you like to tell me what the hell you’re thinkin’, Sixsmith?” She didn’t sound angry, she never did, but I was made tense as she circle me, brushing me by with her hogtied mane and pear-shaped flanks.

“This Sovereign business won’t stop here.” I explained, my eyes still locked on the stagger of bucks who brought my finest stores out in a few, roughly patched-up crates… An open tap certainly inspired loyalty.

“Since when do you care about any other business but your own?” She purred, sidling up to watch the same sorry scene that I did. “Don’t tell me that Rawhide finally got it right.”

“If you sift through enough of his shit, you’re bound to find some gold.” I could speak from experience, having listened to the bastard ghoul ramble around his stories, which were mostly made-up right off the bat. “We ought to rally all the survivors along the rail, start making our way to New Calvary.”

“Why do you expect any of this pious rabble to follow you.” She kept close, which I wouldn’t complain about given the cold. I’d have paid for this kind of treatment most other nights, after all. “They hate us, Sweetie. We’re the reason that they last saw their bucks smiling wide and singing in some gutter just yesterday morning. Hell, we might just be the reason that Buckner couldn’t stand on its legs and fight.”

“I’m not going to ask ‘em their opinion.” I walked over to my stockade of inebriants, well aware that it could not be trusted in the hooves of such boozehounds for long. They were satisfied now, thanks to my wholesale giveaway of the tap cider, but it wouldn’t be long before they were chomping at the bit for just another hit. “Me and my bar are leaving!” I yelled, drawing from the fires in their sullen eyes. “And, if things go our way, I figure we’ll get a fresh start down in the big, black city. Start up the first New Calvary branch of our very own Buckner Tavern, and drink those rats right back under their tables.”

There were some cheers from the only ponies capable of cheering at a time like this, but the little congregations remained quiet, but for a few wailing babes and sobbing widows. Sovereign had killed all the men, who’d resisted, and taken most of the younger girls, but the demographics here still seemed odd to me. It was as if their kills had been made off-hoof, as they gunned down anything in their way… or did whatever it was that these legendary soldiers did. The only corpses were out along the rails, and yet every single building had been put to flame. They’d done a better job of displacing us than destroying us.

“The rest of the towns along this rail are going to get hit just as hard as we did, and I’m thinking we’ll be better off together.” Cherry Cola still stood at my side, which was probably not doing much to win the more peevish listeners over. “I’m walking to New Calvary, and I’ll take anypony who chooses to follow: Be it because they want to help, or even if they’re just hoping to get a free drink along the way.”

“Like you’re so noble!” cried one of those damned widows. I couldn’t fault them for being a little bitter, but there was no reason to go dragging my good name through the mud like that.

“There are ponies out there who could benefit from a drink even more than you, Ma’am.” I waved her off, and led my sorry trail of alkies along the rail, like some red-eyed lion’s pride whose queen was a whore and whose king was a washed-up old war hero. “Who’s to say I’m not just lookin’ to make a profit out there in the big ol’ broken world.” This brought them to a hush. As far as I’m concerned: There’s nothing worse than false modesty… except for false airs of nobility. “Now, you can either stay here and die with Buckner, or tag along for this pilgrimage of prostitutes and pugilists… It’s no skin off my back.”

Somehow, I knew they would follow. It seemed the old days had left me with more than a hunger for bits and an impressive display of battle scars. Who knows? Maybe, some of Damascus’ ability to inspire loyalty had rubbed off on me, or maybe ponies just got a lot easier to steer during hard times, and buck’s like us were just lucky enough to end up holding the reins. “Jon,” I called the boy to attention. “Keep an eye on my stock, would’ya? And you might as well make sure no one’s left passed out in the snow… while you’re at it.” He ran off, saluting me into a role of command.

“Would you look at that… It’s like the Tribe War all over again.” Cherry laughed.

“I think things might be much worse than that.”

“Oh come on, Sweetie, don’t you get all grim with me. If I’m going to get caught up in this mess again, then I’m hoping it’s with the same lion-maned buck I saddled up with the last time.” She drew in close, which I was glad for. It seemed we were both starting to feel the stirrings of our younger days. “You were always a lot more fun than those other boys… Cyrus wouldn’t touch a mare who hadn’t been thoroughly dipped in holy water, and old Machk daddy treated ponies fair enough… but wasn’t so inclined to us, if you take my meaning.” I certainly did. “You know… I even went after that fella Damascus once.”

“That couldn’t have ended well.” I chuckled, hanging back to let my eyes explore a little.

“I could tell that he was more open to… sins of the flesh, shall we say.” We shall, I thought, still exploring. “But he apparently had a real special girl out West, ‘neath the capital if the rumors were anything to go by.” They usually weren’t. “It’s a pity: He wasn’t bad, for a ghoul… not bad at all.”

“You always had a thing for the strong, skinless type.”

Speaking of which… “Why, Hello there! My dearest friend.” The ghoul slurred. It was good to know that Rawhide could still stay on his hooves, seeing as he served as a standard for the ‘Worst Case Scenario’. “Me and some of th’ boys were talking, and… well, there are some awful disheartened souls back there.”

I had stubbornly kept to staring straight along the rails, except when leering in the pursuit of newly fed fires, or glancing at shadows that moved between the falls of feather-like snow. “Those crates are staying closed until we reach the next town over, unless you’re willing to pay the transit tax.” I winked at Cherry. “It’s national law that the mobile sale of alcohol is done at an astounding mark up of prices! It’s shocking really, and as a honest Bartender I can’t say that I endorse it… but, the law is the law.”

“Never mind the drinks, Sixsmith.” I’d say the whiskey was getting to him, but it had already gotten to him a long time ago, and had stayed put ever since. “We need something other than spirits to rouse these spirits... I’s seen you and Cherry hitting it off up here, and… well, me and the older folks were wondering if you’d do one of them songs you used to do so well… Y’know, back when the Buckner Tavern and the Buckner Brothel was all snugly fit up into the Buckner Saloon.”

Some of the much older folks if it was told true. Those were the days right after the Great Tribe War, when all my bits and battle scars could keep me neck-high in Cherry Cola for all the hours I could possibly wish for, and the customers only paid for a little cider to go along with my stories: To wash ‘em down, as it were. “Oooh!” she squealed. “Oh, we just gotta do one for the boys, Sweetie. We just gotta!”

Call it an old veterans attempt to take himself back to the glory days, or even just another rolled dice in the mating game, but I signed myself up without even a stutter. “Fairytale of New Calvary?”

“Seems only appropriate…. And I’m sure the foals will love it.” She nodded, smiling like a fresh-faced filly who’d just bussed herself out to that two-faced city, and now spun in circles with stars and streetlights dancing in her eyes. “Get the old-timers to hum us in, won’t you Rawhide?”

The loyal old bastard ran off to gather our chorus of the drunk and disorderly, and we could soon here the beautiful cacophony of deaf tones and lost rhythms rising all around us.

And then, for the first time in decades, I started to sing.

T’was Hearth’s Warming Eve, babe

In the drunk tank

An old man said to me: won’t see another one

And then he sang a song

The Rare Old Mountain Dew

I turned my face away

and dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one

Came in eighteen to one

I’ve got a feeling

This year’s for me and you

So happy fire’s light

I love you baby

I can see a better time

When all our dreams come true

We could do nothing but sing the next few bars of music, but the rises of haggard, torn voices couple with a few sweeter singers further back, made instruments seem crude and cold in comparison.

I looked back to make absolutely certain, but surely enough, all the widows had not only followed me, but were joining us in our butchering of the greatest winter’s carol ever written.

Then Cherry, young and happy and free again, took up the lead.

They’ve got cars big as bars

They’ve got a river of gold

But the wind goes right through you

It’s no place for the old

When you first took my hoof

On that Hearth’s Warming Eve

You promised a new day was waiting for me

You were handsome

You were pretty

Queen of that black city

When the band finished playing they howled out for more

Ol’ Sapphire was swinging

All the drunks they were singing

We kissed on a corner then danced through the night

The boys of the NCPD choir

Still singing “Stolen Bay”

And the bells were ringing out

For brighter days

Cherry and I swerved through our motley lion’s pride, skipping and swaying in the snow, and passing nothing but smiling faces as we all waited for a return of that world-ending chorus.

Although, and I think she’d say the same, this part of the song was our favorite to sing together.

You’re a bum

You’re a punk

You’re an old slut on junk

Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed

You scumbag, you maggot

You cheap lousy faggot

Heart’s Warming, your arse

I pray God it’s our last

Again, our voices joined by all of Buckner, we sang the very last thing that every drunk forgot.

The boys of the NCPD choir

Still singing “Stolen Bay”

And the bells were ringing out

For brighter days

I could have been someone

Well so could anyone

You took my dreams from me

When I first found you

I kept them with me babe

I put them with my own

Can’t make it all alone

I’ve built my dreams around you

I had loved her then, and as we came together from across the rabble of somehow joyous survivors, I knew that I loved Cherry Cola again. Red had reminded me of her, just like every other broken and beautiful mare that had come and gone over the last few decades, never filling this void. Now, thanks to all the death and fire and ruin behind us, we had finally found each other. There would be no Buckner Tavern in New Calvary… but the Buckner Saloon would be getting one hell of a grand opening.

The boys of the NCPD choir

Still singing “Stolen Bay”

And the bells were ringing out

For brighter days

Buckner sang on into the night, even though we had already run out of words.