Nurse Redheart was already sitting at her desk in the supervisory nurses' office when her husband, Accounts Payable, arrived at noon.

He dropped his lunchbox on her desk and sat down across from her. "Busy morning, Honey?"

"It’s good to see you, AP," Redheart said. "Not too busy. Had to give a colt some stitches. Buckball. Slow day for the new doctor."

AP nodded. "Is the new guy getting any better?"

Redheart frowned and flicked her ears. "He'll be a fine general practitioner in a quiet clinic somewhere. Emergency Rooms, well... hrmmmm." She munched on a piece of salmon jerky, fighting to chew it with pony teeth. Even after nine years of marriage, AP never had figured out where she acquired that particular taste. He didn't know a single other pony who liked fish. The smoky stench always bothered his own appetite.

"I wonder if the twins are having a good day?" Redheart asked. "Contrail had some sniffles. If he's getting sick he'll be crabby for the teachers, and Dandelion will sit on him."

"Like any big sister should," AP quipped.

"You shouldn't believe my brothers, I almost hardly never beat them up."

"You said you have to work late tonight?" AP asked.

"Yeah, Nurse Snowheart is sick. After my shift, I'm covering her prenatal class—"

KABOOM! Rainbow Dash blasted in through the emergency room doors with a flash of colors, screaming, "Help her! Help! Help! Help!"

Redheart dashed out of the office. "What happened?" Redheart demanded as she took a small filly wearing a pink bow from Rainbow's hooves.

AP followed at a run, but he stuck close to the wall, out of the way. He was an accountant, not a nurse or a doctor.

"Don't know!" Rainbow Dash hovered, wringing her forehooves together. "Apple Bloom was in the attic at the Acres. She screamed and stumbled down the ladder and collapsed. She was turning blue, so I rainboomed her here."

Dr. Surgical Steel galloped up, levitating his stethoscope to Apple Bloom's ribs. "She's barely breathing. What happened?"

"I said I don't know!" screamed Rainbow Dash, wagging her hooves at the doctor.

"You have to tell me what, what, what I'm dealing with!" Dr. Steel snapped back.

AP's heart pounded, his vision getting dim around the edges, picturing his twins, his little filly and colt, and how he would feel if one of them... if something terrible...

His wife was there. Redheart was in charge. Apple Bloom would be fine.

Although Apple Bloom looked pretty bad... and the new doctor seemed to be under the misimpression that he was in charge.

Redheart examined the filly's body, her hooves working the yellow coat against the grain, her nose inches from Apple Bloom's skin.

"Doc," Rainbow Dash said, pointing a hoof, her voice plaintive, "she's bluer than I am! Do something!"

"I can't go around treating what I don't know what it is!"

"Four, six, eight—these are stings," Redheart said. "A dozen. Two dozen. Three dozen. Rainbow Dash, is Apple Bloom allergic to stings? Did she get into a hornets' nest in that attic?"

Rainbow's head snapped over to look at Redheart. "I—I don't know! Applejack is on her way, but it's a long run. AJ would know."

Redheart looked at Dr. Steel. "Anaphylactic shock."

"We can't—how can—that's a guess!" he spluttered.

Redheart pointed at Nurse Tenderheart. "Intubation kit." She pointed at an orderly. "Anaphylaxis kit."

Dr. Steel's face paled and his jaw worked, clenching and unclenching, his ears drooping.

"Dash," Redheart said, her voice calm, with the same soothing tones she used when one of her foals was upset. "You just carried her. How much does she weigh?"

"I... I don't know."

Redheart cocked her head, studying the unmoving filly. "Thirty-seven, Forty pounds. Doctor, potion dosage?"

"I, I, I, what?" Dr. Steel stammered.

Redheart looked into his eyes. Firmly: "Forty pound filly. Allergy potion. Dosage."

"Save her save her save her!" Dash said, dancing from hoof to hoof.

The doctor looked at the ceiling for a second, mumbling the mathematics. Loudly: "Six hundred."

The orderly, an older unicorn stallion, sprinted up with the anaphylaxis kit. Redheart ripped it from his aura, opened it, and twisted a dial on the injector. "Six hundred," Redheart repeated.

Dash leaped into the air, flapping in panic, blowing a breeze across the medical team, knocking off Redheart's white cap. Her pink bun fell loose, mane spilling down her back.

Grabbing the injector between her forehooves, Redheart slammed it into the inside of Apple Bloom's thigh, pushed the plunger, and tossed the injector to the orderly.

AP's wings trembled and tears blurred his vision. Sweet Luna, Apple Bloom was blue, especially her face.

Nurse Tenderheart shoved an intubation kit at the doctor. He nodded and ripped it open. Tenderheart's hooves forced Apple Bloom's jaws apart. Apple Bloom's pink bow made a limp frame of color around the slack face.

"C'mon," AP whispered, "c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon..." His few bites of lunch soured in his belly, turning acidic and vile. His wings flitted.

The doors burst open again. Applejack and Big Mac stormed toward their little sister. Applejack shouted, "What's going on here what're y'all doin'—"

AP moved to block them, flaring his wings wide. "No!" he shouted. "Let them work!"

Applejack stopped, her face turning hard. She slapped AP's left wing down, looking over it. AP looked back, over his own withers. Dr. Steel inserted the breathing tube into Apple Bloom's mouth, pushing in—

"Missed," Redheart said, her ear to the filly's chest. "Esophagus." The doctor pulled the tube back out, and tried again.

"Missed," Redheart said. The doctor tried again.

"Missed! Doctor..."

Dr. Steel's eyes widened. He looked at Redheart. "Nurse—nurse, you do it. She's dying."

At the word dying, Applejack and Big Mac screamed. Applejack bowled AP clean over, stepping on his wing. Mac trampled on AP's tail.

Applejack stood next to the medical team, screaming incoherently in the doctor's face.

With a single leap, Redheart was on the gurney, straddling Apple Bloom's tiny chest, kneeling over the dying filly.

The flash and pop! of a teleport filled the emergency room. Twilight and Starlight appeared, a dozen feet away, each holding one of the other Crusaders.

Redheart grabbed the intubation kit from the doctor's aura, cradled it in her forehooves, closed her eyes, and took two deep breaths.

Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle shouted, screeching as soon as the noise of the teleport faded. Their shrieks added to the bedlam that reigned over Ponyville Hospital's Emergency Room. Discord appeared with another teleport. "I was sensing some wonderful chaos and—oh my!"

"Apple Bloom..." Big Mac howled, inches from Redheart, his voice thin. Rainbow Dash landed and put a wing on Applejack's withers, jostling Redheart.

With a smooth motion, Redheart inserted the tube, down Apple Bloom's throat, and the filly arched her back and gasped as it pushed past the swelling and toward her lungs. She breathed in, greedy for air, and Nurse Tenderheart began squeezing rhythmically on the rubber bladder attached to the tube.

The filly struggled, weakly, under Redheart's weight and her eyes cracked open. The blue color began to fade, her normal color slowly returning. Her forehoof reached up to the tube and tugged. Redheart took the hoof between her own, protecting the breathing tube. "Apple Bloom," she said. "We've got you. It's okay." The filly's eyes closed again, and Redheart laid her small hoof onto her chest.

Applejack hugged Mac, and the others quieted down, the bedlam fading.

Redheart hopped off the gurney and pointed at AP. "Dear? Take the family up to ICU and get them calmed down. We'll meet them up there once we've got her stabilized."

Forty-five minutes later, AP was sitting in the Nurse Supervisor's office, staring sickly at his lunch, appetite completely gone. He had icepacks on his wing and tail.

Dr. Steel wandered into the office, glanced around, and sat down in Redheart's chair. "I've never been in here before," he said. "We doctors leave the nurses their sanctuary."

"How is she?" AP asked.

Dr. Steel sighed and rubbed his face. "Apple Bloom'll be fine, in a week or ten days, no thanks to me. I—I screwed up."

"You knew when to step back and let Redheart take over," AP said, pointing a feather at the doctor. "You and your team saved that filly. You all saved that filly's life."

The doctor nodded and looked at AP. "How—by Celestia and Luna, Redheart was cool. She was ice. I've never seen anypony, not even my professors, quite that cool. How... AP, she's your wife. How does she do it? She's so... nice. So normal. It was like she was a completely different mare. How can I learn to be like that?"

AP shook his head. "They don't teach that in school."

The doctor's ears perked up. "Then... where did she learn it? Can I learn from her?"

AP pointed a feather at the wall behind the doctor. He turned the chair around.

Five different senior nurses took shifts as the Emergency Room's supervisory nurse, at least one of them on duty every single minute of the year. The five shared the office, so five sets of diplomas and credentials hung on the walls in fancy frames.

Redheart's section of the wall held something additional that none of the others had: Beneath the ornate diplomas and certifications, a simple wooden frame held a six-inch scrap of fabric behind a piece of glass.

The fabric had once been a medium-gray, but old bloodstains and dried mud ruined the color. A Guard medic's red cross patch and corporal's stripes were visible through the dark-brown bloodstains. Next to the red cross was another patch, a gold sunburst—Celestia's cutie mark—inscribed with a black block numeral 1.

Embroidered under the sun were small black letters: THE HOUSEHOLD BATTALION. Above the sun, in larger blood-red letters: PERSEVERE.

Dr. Steel's face went white. "By Twilight's wings... Redheart was... she was one of...?"

AP nodded, his throat dry. "One of Celestia's Own."

Early one morning several months later, AP woke up, cold despite the blankets. A bitter winter storm rattled the bedroom windows. A gust shook the house and fine snow tinkled against the window glass.

He scooted a few inches to his left, trying to get closer to Redheart. The stout earth mare made a fuzzy space heater beneath the blankets on these cold winter nights. Unfurling a wing, he reached for her... and found her side of the bed empty. Darn it. Of course. It was two days before Hearth's Warming.

He would go find her and talk to her.

This year, he would refuse her excuses and demand she talk. It had been nine years. He would not let it turn into ten. He would find out why the holiday season always made her so sullen. He would find a way to help bear this load for her, whatever it was.

AP gasped as his hooves touched the cold floor, then struggled into his slippers. He stopped in front of the twins' bedroom, listened, and heard no noise. They would wake up soon, rambunctious and ready for their day. Their preschool was closed for the holiday... maybe AP's brother could foalsit them if he got Redheart talking.

AP headed downstairs, finding Redheart sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the snowy night through a large window, a single jar of fireflies casting dim light and deep shadows.

His breath caught. She was so beautiful, this mare he loved, the mare who was the mother of his foals, the mare with whom he planned to welcome more foals someday. It still always amazed him how much she loved him in return.

Her pink mane fell messily around her face, and her bright blue eyes moved down to stare at her right forehoof, staring at the ugly scar that marred the soft frog on the underside. The skin remained puckered and dark, even so many years after... whatever... had happened to it.

"Hey, dear," she said, looking up. Her voice was gravelly and thick, not its usual soft soprano. "I'm sorry I woke you."

"Redheart, love," he said, and sat in the chair next to her. "Nightmare?"

"You can't prove that." Her coffee mug wasn't steaming anymore, perhaps an hour cold.

"Luna?" he asked.

"No." Redheart shook her head. "Not this time of year. Too many of my old friends need her tonight, too."

"Tell me."

She shook her head. "It's—it's still classified. It's classified forever."

"You think I'll turn you in?"

"There are things ordinary ponies are better off not knowing."

He took her hoof between his forehooves and kissed her scar.

She grimaced, her face twisting with the old memories, then smiled at him. "Thank you. For... for everything. For loving me."

He lifted her chin up with the feathers of his left wing. "I can't help my wife if I don't know."

She looked away from him, out the window into the black night. "There are parts... parts I can tell... it's not all a Royal secret."

He kissed her lips. "Please. You're in pain. I'm your husband."

"It's to protect you."

"If you tell me, it'll be a weight you don't have to bear alone."

"Have you ever looked at my old Guard stuff?" Redheart asked.

"I did. Yeah. When you were pregnant, when I turned the storage room into the nursery. I had to move all your things."

Redheart bit her lip.

AP asked, "Are you ashamed?"

"No! No, never. I'm proud of everything I did. I just can't stand to see those medals, because they remind me of too many things. I didn't really deserve..."

"I don't think I believe that. I've seen you running that emergency room. Everypony else, losing their heads, but you?"

"Doctor Steel is coming around. I've got him intubating the training dummy while blindfolded. Next time I see Trixie, I'll buy some fireworks, and see how the doctor does with—" Redheart grinned "—distractions."

"That's good," AP said. "But you're trying to change the subject on me."

Redheart's smirk fell. "Yeah. My friends, the ones who died. They deserved the medals more than me. The Guard likes to hang decorations on living ponies. Living ponies make better copy in the newspaper."

"I don't know guard stuff," AP said, "and the library didn't have a uniform manual, I checked, but anypony can recognize the—"

Redheart grimaced. "Horse apples!"

"The Cross, love. The Cross of Valor. The Guard never, ever gives that to the wrong pony."

"This time, they did," Redheart said. "I probably deserved the Silver Shield."

"Huh?"

"One level down."

"Honey," AP said, "if we went to a formal event—a coronation, the Grand Galloping Gala, a diplomatic ball—the Cross would give you the social precedence of a countess. You're not just some other ex-Guard. That's the highest medal there is. What happened to you?"

"Four," Redheart said, her voice thick with suppressed tears. "Four times..."

"What?" AP asked. "Four times what?"

"Momma? Daddy?" said a tiny voice behind them.

They both turned to look at their daughter, Dandelion. The tiny earth filly held a stuffed bear under one foreleg. She wore yellow hoofie pajamas decorated with Fluttershy's cutie mark, Fluttershy being her favorite Bearer. (Her twin brother Contrail, being a pegasus colt, of course idolized Rainbow Dash.)

"Good morning!" Redheart called, her voice instantly cheerful. Redheart scooped up Dandelion and spun her in a circle, then pulled the filly to her chest in a tight hug. Dandelion squealed happily and Redheart made an mmmmmmm! sound.

Dandelion said, "Contrail pooped and the stinkies woke me up. Can I have breakfast?"

Redheart laughed, and smiled at AP. "You want to deal with the mess? I'll make waffles."

"My diaper needs changies too," Dandelion said. "But I hasn't pooped."

"I'll change that diaper," Redheart declared, and kissed Dandelion’s nose.

"Your magnanimity astounds me," AP replied, and kissed Redheart, then Dandelion, before starting towards the twins' bedroom to fetch Contrail.

Redheart chuckled, and tossed Dandelion onto her withers and trotted toward the changing table.

"Hey Daddy?" Dandelion asked. "Momma said 'horse apples.' Does she gotta sit in time out?"

Two hours later, with AP's little brother watching the twins, Redheart and AP sat at the kitchen table again. The sun, low but crystal clear in the winter morning, brightened the kitchen. Pegasi in brightly colored parkas cleared away the remaining clouds from the overnight storm.

"Four times," AP prompted. "You said, 'four times.'"

"After basic and advanced training, I was on active duty eleven months before I got hurt too badly to stay a regular. They busted me out into the reserves, so I went to college. I got awarded the Wounded in Action decoration four times in those eleven months. Plus so many other decorations I wish I'd never gotten..."

She was shaking. He held her forehoof between his. "Such as?"

"Such as," Redheart replied, "the Prisoner of War medal."

AP's head spun. He released her hoof and grabbed onto the table, balancing himself.

"That was my all-black ribbon," Redheart said. "In with my others."

"There was also a medal in with your stuff that was strange," AP said. "Mother-of-pearl, maybe?"

"Hippogriffian. Hippogriffs are great sailors but lousy soldiers. We got seconded to their fleet as marines."

"Tell me."

"I can tell you about three of the wounds," she said. "And that covers the time I got taken prisoner, too. The fourth story is a secret that'll go to my grave."

"What happened?" he said. "Equestria hasn't had a war in over a century. Monsters?"

"The most vile monsters that the world knows."

He frowned, considering. "Hydras? Cockatrices?"

She chuckled, a grim and humorless sound. "Not dumb animals, thinking monsters. Pirates. Slavers. Evil in its most distilled form. Hostis sapiens generis, the common enemy of all races. Celestia sent us, supported by the Hippogriff Navy, far to the south, beyond Equestria."

The blood drained from AP's head, and the bright room went dim. "You—you fought in the Southern Expedition? I kept up with that in the newspaper. I had—I had no idea my future wife... when I was reading the articles..."

She nodded her head, and raised her scarred hoof. "This scar," she said, "I got it a few months before the Southern Expedition. We didn't know it at the time, but some mercenaries were being paid by the slave traders to probe Equestria's defenses."

"The Southern Marches? That was in the newspapers, too."

"The Southern Marches. This scar was worth my first Wounded in Action, my Combat Action Badge, my Prisoner of War decoration, and some other crap they hung on me that I didn't deserve. It was my first scrap."

"Scrap?"

"We never called it a 'fight' or a 'battle.' In Celestia's Own, we called them 'scraps.'"

"Tell me."

"You... you won't like the stories," Redheart said, staring into his eyes. "And I'm not going to lie, not at all. I've never lied to you once, in all our years together. I won't start now. Every detail. If you can't hear about me bleeding into the dirt, if you can't hear about the ponies or 'griffs I killed, stop me now."

AP swallowed twice. "Honey... you—you've killed? You were a medic."

She gave a harsh laugh, on the edge of maniacal. "Do...do you think slavers obey the laws of war? Do you think pirates would give quarter to a wounded soldier, just because he was bleeding to death? Do you think I would allow my patient to be murdered in front of me?"

He shook his head. "No, you wouldn't, would you? Tell me. Please. Let me help you. Let me love you. Let me carry this weight with you."

She glowered at the scar on her hoof. She sat, unmoving, for more than a minute.

AP put a hoof on her shoulder. "Honey?"

"I don't know the big picture, so don't ask. I was just a medic. Not an officer, not a general, not a princess. All I can tell you is what happened in front of my nose. Don't ask me why this or why that, because I just went where the officers ordered."

He nodded, and scooted his chair closer to her. She leaned against his chest, and her tears wet his coat. AP wrapped his wings around her.

She trembled.

Redheart started, "It was about a week after the Summer Sun Celebration, and First Battalion, the Household Battalion—'Celestia's Own,' before Luna's return—was in the south of Equestria, near Somnambula…"

Constructive comments always welcome!

That night I sat in front of a campfire. The sun was down, and I finally had my first chance to get off my hooves all day. A river barge sat grounded on the shallow mud flats at the edge of the river. Real doctors and nurses were treating our dozen wounded, so I'd been relieved and sent to go get some chow.

I had no appetite. I doubted I would ever eat food again. My gut was a solid lump of stone. My ears still rang with screams of pain and shouts of Pony down! or Medic up!

Instead of eating, I sat on my haunches, wrapping a bandage around my right forehoof. My kit bag sat open next to me. I just felt... I mean, numb doesn't even begin to touch it. The scrap had lasted for fourteen never-ending hours, and I had been a complete rookie when I woke up that morning.

I looked at the stars. I'd never seen the stars like that before. I grew up in the city, and the swirls and whorls and stars into the depths of infinity... I shook my head, trying to focus, stopping my mind from wandering.

I was covered in blood. Much of it belonged to our team's senior medic, Amber Grace, my closest friend. She was dead because I couldn't staunch her bleeding. Her injury—it wasn't that bad. I should have been able to save her, but I didn't.

What really scared me: I wasn't even shaking from the adrenaline letdown. Less than a month before, I'd dealt with a dire medical emergency. A twelve-year-old filly after she suffered a nasty fall. I gave her a field tracheotomy, saving her life, and I shook and vomited for hours after the surgeons took her from me.

But, sitting in front of that campfire, wrapping up my own hoof, I just felt... hollow.

I was scared that being a newly-minted veteran meant I had lost myself. I wanted to be a nurse, someday. Somepony hollow wouldn't have a very good bedside manner, would she?

Our new platoon sergeant, Flash Sentry, trotted up and sat across from me, on the other side of the campfire.

"Private Redheart."

"Sarge." Our old platoon sergeant was dead. I had failed to save him, too.

"You did well, Private," Sergeant Flash said.

I kept wrapping the bandages around my hoof. "No, Sarge. I lost six of ours."

Ten and six. To that point in my life, I had saved ten lives—and lost six. Eight of the ten, and all six of the lost, in the last few hours.

"You saved Morning Shadow. You saved her for sure."

My stomach started to roil once he mentioned Morning Shadow. I was actually kind of pleased that I felt sick. I was pleased to be feeling anything at all. My whole body trembled. "She'll lose that hoof. The surgeons will have to amputate."

Flash nodded and pulled off his helmet. "I can't call you 'rookie' anymore."

I finished wrapping my hoof and stood up. "Ah–Celestia–ow," I gasped, and sat back down, panting from the pain, cradling my hoof to my chest. A tear ran down my nose.

Flash glared at me. His voice snapped from 'friendly comrade' to 'angry sergeant.' "What happened to you, Private?"

"Mosquito bite," I said, and started unwrapping my wound again. "They're big down here near the river."

I was going to need to pack in more gauze to cushion it enough to walk. Without the terror dulling the pain, I couldn't bear to put any weight on my hoof.

Once I had it unwrapped, Flash held up a wing. "Hold on." Flash scooted around the campfire and looked at me. He grabbed my hoof and held it in the fire’s light.

I tried to ignore him, listening to the calls of the night birds. Something else I never had heard growing up in Whinnyapolis.

"Private! When did you do that?"

"Around... dawn?"

He looked at the moon. "That was—that was hours ago! How did you stay on that all day?"

I looked at the fire, and pulled my hoof back to my chest, and wrapped my left foreleg around it. "I chewed a painkiller. It just now started hurting."

"Hey! Skipper!" Flash yelled. "Mister Armor!"

Our platoon commander, Shining Armor, trotted up. A cadet, seconded from the Academy, not yet an officer, he was Mr. Armor, not yet Lieutenant, but we still called him Sir.

He didn't look any better than me: eyes wide and hollow, face more pale than usual. He had been a rookie that morning, too. Celestia knows the stress is even worse for officers, since they're responsible for the whole unit, but I was only responsible for a few wounded.

"Sergeant Flash?" Mr. Armor asked.

"Look at Redheart's hoof."

"You look bad, sir," I said. "You need some chow and some rest. Doctor's orders."

"Give me your hoof," Mr. Armor said.

I fought to keep my hoof tucked up to my chest, fought with all my strength, but his aura pulled my hoof toward the firelight like he was picking up a scrap of tissue.

"Redheart," he said quietly, "you stepped on a caltrop."

"No, sir. Mosquito bite."

"Redheart, not funny. Caltrop?"

My ears flattened. "Yes, Mr. Armor."

"Did you pull it out yourself? It tore your frog apart."

"Yes, Mr. Armor. There was work to do. I had to get back on my hooves."

He sniffed. "It's already infected."

"I put a salve on it."

"What did you step in?"

I gagged slightly, remembering the stench. "I had to reach into Private Sunlight's intestinal wound."

Flash flicked his tail. "That's begging for an infection."

"I got Sunlight's bleeding stopped," I pointed my nose at the tent full of wounded and doctors. "I saved her life."

Mr. Armor and Sergeant Flash looked at each other for a few seconds, then nodded.

"Redheart," Mr. Armor said, "You did good. You did great."

I snorted, and gave a barking laugh that bordered on hysterical. "If six dead is great, what do you consider terrible, sir?"

Mr. Armor frowned at me. "I'm going to recommend you for a decoration. The Medic's Star, I suppose. But..."

Sergeant Flash took over: "But, you're an evacuation case. Present yourself to the doctors, and we expect you on the barge when it pulls out."

Mr. Armor's aura disappeared and I yanked my hoof back. "Sir... Sarge... please. Tomorrow... we lost Amber today. I'm the last medic in the company. You can't, can't send me to the rear, sir. What'll happen tomorrow?"

Shining Armor sat down in front of me, and put a hoof on my shoulder. "Redheart—we've got to get your hoof treated, or you'll lose it."

"Will not!"

His voice turned very soft. "You're the medic. Tell me the truth. Tell yourself the truth."

I looked at the ragged wound, and blinked back a tear. I had stepped on the caltrop that morning, running to a wounded trooper. I fell, stumbled, landed on my side. The caltrop was four barbed metal hooks welded into a tetrahedron, and one was crammed fully into my hoof, clean up to the bone. I grabbed a pair of pliers from my bag, gripped them in my mouth, and ripped the barb out. It tore the meat and muscle, shredded tendons, and...

And, I admit, I screamed and blubbered and cried like a little foal for a few seconds after that.

Then I spent hours running across open land, through creeks, stepping in piles of blood or bodily waste...

If a trooper had presented this wound to me, I would have ordered her evacuated.

"Yes, Mr. Armor. But... I'm willing to risk that, so the team has a medic tomorrow. I volunteer to stay."

"Alpha company is leading the sweep tomorrow," Mr. Armor said, "and we kicked those raiders' hindquarters today. I don't think we'll need you."

"B-b-but what if you do, sir? Sir, please..."

I shook. It had taken hours, but it finally hit me. I leaned away from those two and vomited onto the dirt, pungent and green. The medical part of my brain told me, You're getting dehydrated!

"We'll need you next week, next month, and next year, too. After you're patched up," Sergeant Flash said.

I sat up and wiped my muzzle on my good foreleg.

"Here, Redheart," Mr. Armor said, and gently levitated me up onto his back. His magic was cool against my coat, which was hot from sitting by the campfire. "No need to walk anymore on that hoof."

He carried me into the tent where the doctors were working.

"Ah, Officer-Cadet Armor," the senior doctor said. "I wanted to compliment your medic there, she did an excellent job, and saved several liv—why are you carrying your medic?"

Flash reached up a wing and lifted my hoof toward the doctor.

The doctor sucked in breath and frowned at my hoof. "Drop her on a bedroll."

Mr. Armor leaned down, and I slid off him, onto a blanket. The doctor fussed over my wound for a half-minute, then passed me a bucket of clean water, a roll of gauze, and some antiseptic. "You're not going to die. We've got worse to deal with. Clean and wrap it up yourself, and you can help watch the other wounded on the barge back upriver tomorrow."

I looked at Sergent Flash and Mr. Armor. "But sir, but sarge... please. I want to stay with the team. Celestia's Own don't quit."

Flash offered a hoof, and I bumped it with my good hoof. "Celestia's Own don't quit," Sergeant Flash agreed.

Mr. Armor offered me his hoof. "Get yourself fixed up. There'll be plenty of work when you're back on your hooves. Celestia's Own don't quit."

"Then why are you making me quit this fight, sir?" I asked as I reluctantly bumped his hoof.

I tried to walk around the medical tent and help with the wounded, but one of the nurses bopped me over the head with his wing and ordered me to lie down. He was an officer, so I had no choice. I started wiping the patches of dried blood off my coat, but with only one hoof, it was impossible, and the nurses were too busy to help me.

I watched one of my other friends die. Cloud Sweeper was a mare from Stratusburg. She and I had been in basic training together, the year before. We bunked together, she in the top bunk, me in the bottom. We spent quite a few nights, or long pack-marches, talking about stallions and the Guard and the future and life. After boot camp, she went to advanced aerial combat training and I went to medic's school, but then we both volunteered for Celestia's Own and found ourselves in the same platoon.

Earlier that day, I had extracted the arrow from her chest cavity, but I must have missed some bleeding.

She drowned in her own blood.

Nine saved and seven lost.

I curled up on the bedroll, cradled my wrapped hoof to my chest, and pretended to sleep. I tried to cry. I wanted to cry. But I couldn't. I blamed the dehydration.

As the first hint of dawn lit up the horizon, a junior doctor shook my shoulder. "Wake up, Private. We're going."

I struggled up, standing on three legs, and shook myself to get my gray medic's smock into place. "Yes, sir."

The eleven wounded got stretchered up the gangplank to the medical barge. I started to slip under the edge of the tent to rejoin my platoon when the senior doctor levitated me up and dropped me at the end of the gangplank. I hobbled up to the barge with what little dignity I could muster.

My hoof really hurt, now, the infection taking hold, and I couldn't bear to put any weight on it at all. I chewed half a painkiller from my kit.

Finally, the bodies, wrapped in sheets, were carried up the gangplank. I closed my eyes and thrashed my tail.

The bodies of the troopers I had failed to save. My failures.

I opened my eyes.

From the shore, Sergeant Flash and Mr. Armor waved to me. I sat down at the railing, and waved back.

The rest of my platoon was eating their breakfast and checking their armor, kit, and weapons. The rest of my platoon was going into a scrap. The rest of my company was going into a scrap.

And they didn't have a medic. My team didn't have a medic! I put my good forehoof on the railing and flexed my knees, took a deep breath...

Mr. Armor glared at me from shore and shook his head no. He mouthed the words court martial.

I plopped down to my bottom and stared at my tail. It was full of brambles and dirt. I dropped my bags next to me.

Ten pegasi grabbed tow-ropes in their teeth and wheeled around to face upriver, slowly hauling the barge against the current, maybe two or three miles per hour.

The doctors humored me, letting me hobble around the barge on three legs, checking bandages and blood pressures. I knew I was just keeping myself busy, but it helped pass the time. My cutie mark wouldn't let me sit still while hurt ponies were about.

As Celestia raised the sun, the sailors running the barge spread an awning out, covering the wounded on the deck. The desert sun would get brutal, later.

While I took the temperature of one of the wounded sergeants, the senior doctor came up behind me and stuck a thermometer in my ear.

"Ow!" I said. "Warn a mare, next time, Colonel." (At least it was a surprise ear thermometer, eh?)

"You've got a fever, Private," he told me. "Go lay down. We'll get you some potion started."

"But, sir, I'm working."

"Celestia's Own!" he sighed, with an eye roll. "Celestia's immortality doesn't rub off on her household troopers, no matter what you lunatics want to believe. Go find a cot and don't move from it. That's an order."

"But—"

He pointed at his Colonel's insignia and glared.

"Sir." I raised my nose and huffed, and flicked my tail as I hobbled past him. Instead of taking a cot, I sat on a bench at the barge's bulwark, near several of the wounded lying on stretchers.

A medic, another private about my age, trotted up. The flash on his shoulder said 'Third Battalion'. Thirdies were good troops, brave, supporting us on the expedition, but we in Celestia's Own had done all the fighting—and dying—so far.

Third Battalion was good, is what I'm trying to say, but Celestia's Own was the best. The best in the world.

I had a Celestia's Own flash on my shoulder, ten other ponies' blood on my coat, and bandages on my hoof, so I raised my nose, just a little, and looked down my muzzle at him.

"Sapphire Bolt," he said. "What's your name?"

"Redheart."

We bumped hooves.

"What... what..." he gestured at my bandaged hoof.

I almost said mosquito bite, but instead I just said, "Caltrop."

He grimaced. "Oof. That hurts me just hearing that word." He levitated up a soapy rag and wiped the blood off my left foreleg, preparing an injection site. "You're covered in blood. How come you weren't cleaned up? Do you want an infection? This is how you get infections."

"Nopony had time. Too many real wounds." I pointed my snout at Midnight Aurora on her stretcher next to us, staring silently at the awning.

"How much of this blood is yours?"

"Practically none of it," I replied.

Flies buzzed, mad for the dried blood, and one landed in my eye. I pawed at it with my bandaged hoof. I flapped my gray smock, trying to shoo away the flies.

"Here," he said, and wiped my face with the rag. "Let me..."

I frowned but said, "Thanks."

It hit me hard to have somepony else cleaning me, taking care of me. We earth ponies... we work so hard as foals with our hooves and our mouths, to get the dexterity we need to keep up with unicorn's fields and pegasi's feathers. I had used my forehooves to clasp a rag and wash my face, neck, and ears, every day of my life, ever since I was a tiny filly.

Having a unicorn babying me, wiping my face like I was an infant who had just spit up?

That hurt. That was when it really crashed down on me that I was injured, and not just a scratch. I didn't cry, but I sniffled and started shaking again.

I looked out from under the awning, over the river and to the far bank. I watched the waterfowl foraging in the shallows, something else I never saw back home in the city...

What would I say to my parents? How would I write a letter, explaining this to my little brothers? I had promised them I would come home perfectly safe. Promised!

"What happened?" Sapphire Bolt asked. "The colonel said you treated most of these other patients."

Midnight Aurora chuckled from her cot and pointed her free wing—the other was splinted and trussed to her flank—at me. "Redheart carried me two hundred yards after I took those arrows. After she stepped on the caltrop."

I looked at the shrouded bodies. "Ivy Mercy was our senior medic. She did most of the work before she... she..."

I looked away from those two, where they wouldn't see the tears that were starting to form. Sapphire Bolt wet the rag in the bucket again, and the water turned red. He wiped my chest and forelegs. "Yesterday was your first?"

"Yeah." I clamped my jaw shut against sudden nausea. I told myself the nausea was from the rolling of the barge. Seasickness.

"Tough start," he said, and gave me a soft punch on the shoulder, then moved to wipe blood off my belly. "None of that is your blood?"

"I carried a trooper slung over my hips, and he bled all over me. I promise, my only injury is my hoof."

"Okay." He levitated up a rubber tube and tied it around my left foreleg, preparing to start a drip for my infection. "I'll get this going and bring you some chow. When did you eat last?"

I looked at the sun. It was getting on toward late morning. "Maybe... thirty hours ago?"

"C'mon, Redheart. One medic to another: you can't help anypony if you're unconscious. You've got to take care of yourself. I'll bring you some chow."

I flicked my ears, and turned to stare at the far riverbank again.

A spell flashed from the scrub on the far bank and hit just ahead of the barge, throwing up a huge plume of dirty water.

A second later, a volley of arrows arced toward us from the same scrub. The plume collapsed, river water raining down on the awning.

My heart accelerated, racing again like it had in the scrap yesterday, and I found my eyes narrowing as I stared at the incoming arrows, judging their path. I dove and landed on Midnight Aurora, covering her. Sapphire Bolt dove and covered Sunlight, who was sedated and unconscious.

Several of the Third Battalion unicorns ran to the railing and cast shields towards the ambush, and the incoming arrows glanced away. Troopers grabbed bows and began to pepper the far bank with return fire, the bottled spells in the arrowheads bursting with flame and shrapnel.

"Pony overboard!" shouted one of the navy ratings. "Pony in the water!"

I stood up. Midnight Aurora grunted as I pushed off her injured wing. I leaned over the edge of the barge, under a glowing shield spell.

One of the pegasi from the towing crew thrashed in the water, an arrow in the meat of his left wing as the current dragged him back downriver. His rubber life jacket flapped, deflated, holed by another arrow. His armor dragged him down.

The barge accelerated as the pegasi flapped harder, and we left the wounded pony farther behind, alone in the river.

"We've got to—" one of the Navy officers was shouting.

I planted my good foreleg on the railing and vaulted into the water.

The water hit me, I went under, gasping, and asking myself what in the world I thought I was doing.

I broke the surface and saw the wounded pegasus. I paddled, chasing him downriver. The barge surged upriver, the tow team's wings thrashing the air.

My medic's smock, soaked, weighed me down, but with only one good hoof I wasn't going to be able to shed it. Just as well, I didn't really want to part with it.

I doggy-paddled. "Pal! Hey, pal! Swim for me!"

He splashed, fighting to tread water. After about thirty seconds, I was able to reach him, and grasp the base of his good wing in my teeth.

Upriver, arrows peppered the barge.

Arrows started to splash around us. Around me and my patient.

If I tried to swim for the barge, we were dead. I probably couldn't catch it, fighting upstream, anyway. By myself? Sure. I'm a darn good swimmer. I would have risked it. Dragging an armored and injured charge? No way.

I swam for the riverbank opposite the concealed archers and spellcaster.

His feathers, soaked with muddy river water, tasted foul on my tongue and I smelled the rotting shoreline vegetation. He thrashed and cursed, but my focus was on that shore, so I really have no other memories of that swim except the single twisted piñon tree I had chosen as my target.

When we hit the shallow mudflats at the riverbank, the wounded pegasus surged up to his hooves and galloped into the scrubby bushes. I took one step on my bad hoof and collapsed to my flank, spluttering as the water got into my nose and mouth.

"Come on!" he hissed at me as he unstrapped his armor. "Heavy crap darn near drowned... get under cover, kid!"

I started crawling, trying to get up to three legs, but the mud sucked at my hooves every time I tried to stand.

He skittered down the mudbank, ignoring the arrows hitting near him, bit the scruff of my neck, and lifted. Pain lanced down my back. Once I was standing, we hobbled together off the riverbank and into the scrub.

"Let's get..." he panted, "let's get out of sight and take a break."

Once we were a hundred yards from the river, hidden in a copse of piñon, I sat down.

"PFC Redheart," I said. "Celestia's Own."

"Chief Spring Thunder," he replied, "Second Riverine Flotilla. What's wrong with your hoof?"

"Caltrop yesterday."

"Wait! Wait. Wait. 'Yesterday?' You were one of the patients, and you dove in to save me?"

"I don't have my kit, but I can get that arrow."

I didn't have my medical bag; I had left that on the barge. All I had were the contents of my smock's pockets. I pulled out a pair of heavy shears, gripped them in my teeth, and snipped off the arrow's feathered shaft. He panted and mumbled curses, but held still and let me work the arrow out.

"It got the tendons," I said, examining his wing, turning it this way and that, watching the bleeding slow as it clotted, "but not the nerves or blood vessels. Surgeons can fix that. You'll be fresh as a foal in six months if we keep the infection out. Which means getting back to civilization ASAP."

He was a small stallion, buttercream yellow with white mane and tail. He asked, "What now?"

I pointed west. "We parallel the river, walk upstream, and try to hook up with friendly forces."

"You can't walk."

"Watch me."

I couldn't walk.

The sun scorched us, blistering my nose. I pulled my hood over my head to protect my ears. My throat burned for water. We were making less than one hundred yards an hour as I tried to struggle through the dense undergrowth on three legs. I weighed twice as much as that scrawny pegasus, so he wasn't going to be carrying me, especially not with a wing wound.

The sun dried our uniforms, at least.

We sat and rested for a few minutes. I glanced at the sun and decided it was noon-ish.

"I need to drink," I said. "Let's sneak back to the riverbank."

"I can fill your canteen for you."

I flapped my smock at him.

"No canteen," he said. "Gotcha."

We heard a branch snap to the north-east.

We both dropped to our bellies and swiveled our ears. Birds flushed from that direction, and I heard distant voices.

"That's not Ponish," he whispered.

"Crud."

These raiders... what would they do if they caught us? They had burned out several Equestrian villages along the border, but had not deliberately harmed any civilians, ensuring the homes were empty before setting them to the torch.

Would that solicitude extend to uniformed military personnel?

"Plan," I said.

"I outrank you."

"Next time we're in a crisis on a boat, I'll remember that. I can't escape. I just, I just can't. Not on this hoof."

"But—"

"I'll break north-northwest and they'll hear me. They'll give chase. You sneak west, and get help, and tell command that I need rescued. Deal?"

"But... no. I'm not leaving a comrade behind. I'll get their attention, you go for help."

"You can walk. I can't. Why is this even a discussion?"

He took a deep breath. "I... I feel like a coward. You jumped in to rescue me. It's my fault you're here."

"Don't worry," I said. "You'll probably get captured, too, ten minutes after me."

"Second Riverine isn't Celestia's Own, but I'm no coward."

"You're... what? Ten years older than me? Wife and foals, I bet?"

He nodded. His face turned green and he swallowed twice.

"See you somewhere," I said, and started crawling north-east, towards the noise.

"See you around." He smacked my butt with his good wing, and started crawling west.

I never saw him again.

I was trying to be quiet, really!

Except, I'm a city mare from Whinnyapolis. I grew up playing hoofball in brick alleys, climbing fire escapes for hide-and-seek. The closest I got to the wilderness as a foal was snowshoeing the city greenways. Take my size, my poor woodcraft, and my injury, add them all together, and I left a noisy trail of broken branches and trampled chaparral.

I heard the non-Ponish language again, behind me, closer.

My heart pounded, and every pulse sent a stab of pain down into my bad hoof. I had to go, get going, try to make some distance, draw them farther away from Spring Thunder.

Standing, I tried to gallop, but on my third step, my injured hoof hit a root, the hard wood poked up into the wound. I crashed down, face-first, and blacked out.

A few seconds later, spitting out dirt and sand, I came to.

I was surrounded.

In a circle around me were six of the fish-like creatures that live in Klugetown, one abyssinian, and a scaly pony-like creature that at the time I didn't recognize, but I now know was a kirin.

The fishy creatures had bows and swords, the abyssinian held a rapier, and the kirin... had no weapon at all.

I started crawling north again.

The abyssinian drew her rapier and pressed its tip against my left cutie mark, drawing a drop of blood.

I stopped crawling.

The kirin took a step forward. "We'll take your surrender, pony."

I curled up on my side, tucked into a ball, and cradled my hoof—with its pathetic rags of bandages finally coming loose—close to my chest. "I'm wounded. That's the only reason you caught me."

My tail slapped against the dirt, no matter how much I tried to stop it. I could hardly see, my eyes were watering so badly. My hoof hurt. Every heartbeat stabbed into the raw nerves and ragged flaps of skin.

"You're still our prisoner," the kirin said.

I opened one of my pockets, working the zipper with my teeth. One of the fish-things nocked an arrow, but didn't draw his bow.

I extracted a square of white silk from my pocket and held it up to the kirin.

He frowned and his horn glowed, levitating the silk from my mouth.

That scared me: I'd never seen a non-pony species with unicorn magic before. What was that thing? What could it do?

He shook out the square. About a foot on a side, a large red cross and the Equestrian flag filled its middle, and the same paragraph was written in two dozen different languages around the flag and red cross.

"What's this?" he said.

Sweet Celestia, my hoof was really hurting by then. I curled into a tighter ball, panting so I wouldn't cry. "Read it."

"I can't read Ponish. Read it to me." He laid it out on the dirt in front of me.

Lifting my head off the ground, I cleared my throat, found the Ponish writing, and read: "I am a medic of Her Equestrian Majesty's Royal Armed Forces. The Laws of War, agreed to by all nations, protect me from harm. I am sworn to treat any wounded, regardless of race or creed. If you assist me, my Government will reward you."

Then, I looked into his eyes, and let my voice turn harsh as I recited the final words from memory: "If you harm me, my Government will inflict terrible revenge upon you."

He nodded, and then translated for his fellows.

Their faces darkened, they growled back and forth in that other language, but then, one by one, they nodded.

"We're professional soldiers," the kirin said. "Even if we have negotiable loyalty, medic of Her Equestrian Majesty's Royal Armed Forces. We're not filthy pirates or slavers. You're our prisoner, and we will treat you how we hope our prisoners would be treated."

Still curled disconsolately on my flank, I pointed my good hoof at his canteen and said, "If that's true, I could really use some water."

He levitated his canteen to me, and I drank. That filthy river water was the best drink I ever had in my life.

They took away my smock and searched it for weapons, but all they found were my shears. One of the fish-folk pocketed them and the kirin put my smock in his saddlebags.

I hopped about five steps and fell on my face before the biggest fish-thing picked me up and slung me over his shoulders in a firemare's carry, clenching my three good hooves against his chest.

How humiliating was that? First, I abandoned my patient. Second, I got caught like a rabbit in a trap. Third, I couldn't even trot with dignity, my snout held high, into captivity.

"Our commander is wounded," the kirin said. "Your chit said you are sworn to treat anycreature in need."

The fish-creature's rolling gait shook my body, and his every footfall rattled my wound.

"Will you treat our wounded?" the kirin repeated.

"I will," I said. "A medic treats any wounded, even the enemy."

"Have you ever treated a hippogriff?" asked the kirin.

"Do you have a name?" I asked.

"Wood Smoke. What's your name, rank, and unit, soldier?"

"Private First Class Redheart. The laws of war do not require I tell you my unit."

He levitated my smock from his bag and shook it out, and looked at the shoulder flash. "I don't read Ponish, but that's Celestia's ass tattoo, and I know the Ponish numeral 'one' when I see it. You're in Celestia's Own. One of Celestia's household troopers will be worth something in trade."

My hackles raised at hearing the Princess's cutie mark referred to as an ass tattoo, but there was nothing I could do. "I'm fresh out of supplies, though, and I've never even seen a hippogriff closer than fifteen feet in my life."

Goodness, my hoof hurt. I sniffed at it. Even over the scent of the desert and the dry wind, I could smell my infection. Its stench grew by the minute.

Terror began to shake my shoulders and sour my stomach. I was on pace to lose my hoof, and my life, if I didn't get to a real pony hospital, with pony doctors and potions, soon.

"We've got a few medical supplies," Wood Smoke said.

I nodded. If I got some potion into my system, it might hold my infection back long enough for the Guard to rescue me.

"Your prior hippogriff sounds like a story," Wood Smoke continued.

"Not really. We stand as honor guard whenever their ambassador visits the Palace. He and his entourage walk past us. Celestia's Own spends a lot of time standing at attention for dignitaries to walk past."

I frowned to myself. I had been happy when we got deployed to the borderlands for some action. I had been ashamed at how many other Household troopers had the Combat Action Badge when I didn't.

What a stupid young idiot two-week-ago me had been. I was missing honor guard duty right that minute!

We left the river's floodplain and climbed into the foothills, the fish-creatures handing off my weight every half hour or so. I kept looking around for some way to escape, but nothing appeared. We reached a camouflaged campsite of a few dozen tents, nestled against the edge of a mesa.

The fish-thing lowered me to the ground in front of a tent. I balanced on three hooves.

Wood Smoke said, "Our commander is in there, along with the medical supplies we have. What do you need?"

"Clean rags, freshly boiled water. And chow. I haven't eaten in two days."

He frowned. "We mostly have meat stew and dried jerky. We're out of pony rations."

My ears drooped. "Oh." We had eaten meat in training, to show us we could survive on it and that it could keep us fit to fight, but Sweet Celestia I didn't want to repeat the experience!

"Our other pony prisoners have been making due on forage. Piñon nuts, mostly."

"What?" Other prisoners? Other ponies? Had they been kidnapping civilians? Sudden sickness turned my stomach. My tail thrashed even though I tried to still it. "How many ponies? Are the ponies in need of medical care? Civilians or Guard?"

"Help our commander, first. Nopony is in medical need."

"Fine," I sighed.

"I don't suppose I need to say it," Wood Smoke whispered in my ear, his breath oddly hot, "but I will anyway. We know the laws of war, too. If you try to escape, we're allowed to get mean. You're miles from your own race, and you can't move very fast on three hooves. Be a cooperative mare, okay?"

I glared at him. Every member of the Guard was sworn to resist and try to escape if captured.

"Duly noted," I growled. "Boil some water."

His horn glowed for a moment, and then his entire body burst into demonic flames. I staggered backward, gasping, and turned my face away from the heat, holding my bad leg up to shield my eyes.

He trotted a few steps away and I lowered my hoof, peeking over it. Wood Smoke placed his foreleg into a cast-iron cauldron. It steamed, the water boiling instantly.

With a flash, he returned to his kirin form. "Ready to help our commander?"

I swallowed a few times, recovering from the transformation. What was that creature? I decided to show no fear, no matter what I felt: I stiffened, stood up as straight as I could on three hooves, and commanded, "Give me my uniform back."

"The weather's hot for that, and it's filthy."

I stomped a rear hoof. "I am a trooper of Celestia's Own Household Battalion, not some money-grubbing mercenary. I have standards to uphold. Give me my uniform back!"

He shrugged, and levitated my smock out of his bag and helped me don it. With my Celestia's Own flash on my shoulder and the red cross on my back, I felt like myself again.

"Let's go save a life." A medic of Her Equestrian Majesty's Royal Armed Forces will save any life.

Their commander was a tall hippogriff mare with a charcoal gray coat and wings. Her feathery mane and tail were iridescent silver. As I stepped into the tent, the stench of gangrene punched me in the face, telling me this would be no easy patient to treat. I turned my head and breathed through my mouth.

Wood Smoke followed close behind me, and the abyssinian behind him.

I dug one-hoofed through their supplies. Two first aid kits. Large kits, but standard civilian gear. Looked like they were stolen from ambulance chariots, considering the mounting brackets on their backs.

"What's her name?" I asked.

The hippogriff shifted a few inches on her cot. "I'm High General North Wind."

High General, I thought, of a single small campsite and a few score mercenaries. Grandiose.

I found one IV bag of antibiotic potion. I nosed it out of the first aid kit and tucked it under my bad leg.

One bag. Just one. I also found two bags of saline solution.

I thought about that. Wood Smoke didn't read Ponish, eh? The bags looked identical outside the printed labels. I could give the saline to the hippogriff, and when she died, claim the gangrene has simply been too severe, too far progressed for treatment, save the antibiotics for myself, save my own life, save myself from an amputation—

My cutie marks itched. No, no I couldn't do that, could I? The hippogriff was sick, very sick. But she could be saved. I really had no choice.

One bag of antibiotics meant it would go to the hippogriff.

One bag meant I was dead. I blinked back tears as I thought about my parents and little brothers.

North Wind laid flat on her back, a thin blanket over her, despite the heat of the desert. I hopped over to her on three legs, and pulled the blanket down with my teeth. The stench of gangrene redoubled, and I flicked my ears in consternation.

"I need help," I said.

Wood Smoke trotted up to me. The abyssinian stood back, fingering her rapier, watching me.

"I can't get the needle in one-hoofed."

"I don't approve of being lied to," Wood Smoke said.

"I'm not a unicorn." I explained what I needed done, and Wood Smoke got one of her veins pricked with the line, and the potion flowing.

"Can you cut out the infection?" the kirin mercenary asked.

"Not one-hoofed. I'll give you directions." It took an hour, but we got the hippogriff's wound debrided and cleaned. The stench left my eyes watering and took my breath away.

"That," I said, pointing at the bag of antibiotic potion. "You need to trade for more of that. One bag might not save her... and I need more for my injury, too."

Wood Smoke frowned, but nodded.

"Here, help me, now." I help up my injured hoof.

"The prisoner is wounded?" asked North Wind, cracking an eye open.

I bit my tongue and wiped my eyes, fighting not to scream, as he used soap and warm water to clean the dirt and grit from my injury, and then smeared protective salve onto it. By the time he started bandaging me up, I was shaking. My head spun and sweat matted my smock to my flanks.

"Thanks," I said, wiping my eyes again.

He nodded, then looked at the abyssinian and spoke in that other language. Then to me, "She'll take you to our stockade."

I hobbled behind the cat-creature, bad leg tucked to my chest. She didn't even look over her shoulder. I guess I seemed beaten and compliant. It shames me to say, I felt beaten and compliant. I looked around, contemplating my escape, but no ideas occured to me.

Their camp was well camouflaged. Perhaps three dozen tents, and some natural caves that cut into the mountain. I estimated about fifty mercenaries in total, but that sort of guess wasn't my specialty.

"I wish I spoke your language," I said.

She looked at me and shrugged. Interesting. Did she understand Ponish? Or was that just a lucky guess?

Wrought iron bars, welded into a gate, blocked a cave opening. Another fish-creature unlocked the gate with a key, opened it, and gestured me in.

My tail tucked and I felt my ears trembling.

This was it.

This made it official.

I, Private First Class Redheart, trained and select trooper of Her Majesty's First Household Battalion, a pony of Celestia's freaking Own, the best military unit the world had ever seen... was a prisoner. I was about to be thrown into a cage like a naughty pet rabbit.

I wanted to curl up in a ball, cradle the agony of my hoof to my chest, and sob.

As I hesitated, the abyssinian kicked me in the butt and forced me forward, ending my little reverie and sprawling me onto my belly. The fish-thing slammed the door and locked it.

"Captain!" came a stallion's voice from the dark. "Captain, company."

My eyes adjusted quickly. There were a few oil lamps on tables, and I counted nine ponies, three of each tribe. The unicorns had inhibitor sheaths strapped over their horns, and the pegasi's wings were shaved or plucked.

One pegasus trotted up, and put a naked wing under my belly, lifting up, so I could stand on three legs. He helped me to a cot, and I flopped down on my side.

"Thanks," I said.

"I'm Captain Astral Flash," the pegasus said, then pointed to a unicorn mare. "This is First Sergeant Dew Diamond. Who're you?"

"PFC Redheart, sir. What's your unit, Captain?"

"Echo company, Fifteenth Battalion. You?"

Fifteenth Battalion? These weren't soldiers, these were civilians in uniform! The Fifteenth was the Southern Provinces' Home Guard militia. These troopers had probably been captured in their own front yards, fighting to buy time to allow their own foals and spouses to escape. Well, nopony had ever doubted the Home Guard's bravery.

I sighed, and curled around my hoof. "Bravo company, Celestia's Own," I said.

"Celestia's Own is here?" the Captain gasped.

"Do we have any chow, sir? I haven't eaten since before dawn yesterday."

They bought me some fish stew and mystery jerky, along with a small bowl of piñon nuts and needles. I wrinkled my nose and ate it, washing it down with a lot of water, while I told them my story, starting with the scrap and ending in the stockade with them.

Their story, in return, was exactly what I expected: raiders hit their village, a platoon of the Home Guard stood firm, along with their company Captain, who lived in town with them. Half the platoon died, half was captured, but the civilians—the Home Guard's own spouses, parents, siblings, and foals—made good their escape, led down an arroyo by their mayor.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

"Ten days," said one of the privates, an earth stallion named Blue Maize. "When did Celetia's Own get here?"

"Four days ago," I said. "We've got these losers on the run. Hopefully we won't have to sit here too much longer."

The other prisoners nodded.

I held my hoof out. "Smell that."

The Captain Astral and Blue Maize leaned forward and sniffed.

"That's bad, Redheart," Captain Astral said.

"Yep. I hope we're not here too much longer. Okay, thanks for the chow. I understand you're all beaten up? Line up and let me examine you."

"None of us are as wounded as you," Sergeant Diamond said.

"Doctor's orders."

Days passed. Interminable days.

For what it's worth, our captors fed us the exact same chow they ate, and gave us all the clean water we needed. There was no torture, no rape, no mistreatment of any kind. They shared the few medical supplies they had—which were wholly inadequate—but they did share them.

Any military lawyer would have agreed: we were treated properly. Being a prisoner still sucked, however.

Five days? Six? Four? I lost count. The wounded hippogriff commander got better. They marched me to her tent three times a day to examine her, and the stench of infection grew less every time. By the third day, she was sitting up and eating, and thanked me for my care.

My hoof got worse by the day, the infection raging, red tracks moving up my leg as the blood infection burgeoned. My fever spiked, and by the fourth day, they were carrying me to the hippogriff's tent, instead of marching me.

By the fifth day, I think it was the fifth day, I was confined to bed. Sergeant Dew Diamond, the only other mare, helped me with the toilet bucket, and I couldn't keep any food or water down. They put the two bags of saline into me, at least.

By the fifth night, I knew I was going to die.

On the sixth morning, I had a fever dream of Princess Cadance leaning over my cot, wiping the sweat off my forehead with a fetlock.

Slowly, I realized... it wasn't a dream.

I flopped around, trying to stand. This was a princess, Celestia's niece. I needed to show her respect!

"Shhhh..." Cadance cooed. "No, no, stay abed, my faithful one"

"What... what... how..." I spluttered.

"I came under a white flag of parley." Cadance levitated an IV bag of potion out of her saddlebags, put the line into my good foreleg, and started the drip. Then she added a bag of whole blood to my line.

"I dunna need blood," I said. "Need antibiotics an' fever reducer."

"I did have to deflect a few arrows, however," Cadance finished. She removed several first aid kits from her bags and gave them to the other troopers, along with ration packs.

"Keep an eye on Redheart," Cadance ordered. "I'll go see what deal I can strike."

"As you command, Princess," Captain Astral said.

I started shivering as the cold potion hit my overheated body. "Blanket," I croaked. "Please." Dew Diamond pulled a blanket over me, and I passed out.

It was dark, deep in the night, when Princess Cadance shook me awake. "Redheart, I've struck a deal. You will give your parole, agree not to fight against these fellows anymore, and they'll let me evacuate you in exchange for another pallet of rations and medical supplies. I can have you in a hospital in five minutes."

Parole? Get out of here, go back to camp, get treated by real doctors with real medicines and potions, but leave these nine other troopers behind? They weren't wounded as badly as me, but they still needed a medic.

And—parole. The Guard's Oath I had sworn on graduation from bootcamp was clear. To accept parole was impermissible. A permanent mark of dishonor. It was better to die.

"No," I croaked. "Thank you, Princess, but no, I can't do that. If my platoon is fighting them, Sergeant Flash and Mr. Armor and the others, I can't give my parole."

"You're dying, Redheart. You have about two days left." She stood up straight and flared her wings. "I am commanding you."

"No parole." I pulled the blanket over my head and spoke through it. "It's dishonorable. I'll stay here with these troopers."

"Soldier!" Captain Astral snapped. "What's wrong with you? You're dying."

"Persevere," I mumbled, and rubbed the shoulder flash, emblazoned with the Battalion's official motto: Persevere. I mumbled, "Celestia's Own don't quit."

Cadance began to sing, an old lullaby my mother had sung to me as a foal, and I had sung to my little brothers in turn:

Her magic glowed though the blanket covering me, and a warm calmness...

I woke up, days later, in a field hospital tent, with my bad hoof wrapped up and attached to a drain. Horrid green pus flowed down the tubing, out of my wound, and a half dozen different IVs flowed into my body. Pain indicated a urinary catheter. A blanket covered my torso, rear legs, and tail.

"That sneaky damn alicorn," I muttered.

Sapphire Bolt, the Third Battalion medic from the barge, was sitting in a folding chair near my bed. He lowered a novel. "What?"

"She accepted parole on my behalf," I said. "After I told her I refused."

Constructive comments always welcome!

Redheart trailed off, and her red-rimmed blue eyes stared at her husband. She shook her head and looked around the kitchen, then back to him.

AP leaned forward and hugged her, a desperate bear hug, and she huffed as the air left her lungs. She hugged him back as he rubbed his hooves up-and-down her withers. “My love…” he whispered into her ear.

He released her, took her hoof that had been torn apart by a caltrop between his, and kissed the scar softly.

"The Guard is darn good at treating infections," she said. "Amazing potions, and any doctor they want. A surgeon with a soft-tissue spell got flown in from Las Pegasus, on the Crown's bit. And the rumor..."

"Rumor?" AP asked.

"That bag of whole blood I didn't need. Well, there are old mare's tales about alicorn blood's healing abilities... I was back on my hooves in four weeks, and fit to fight in nine."

"What happened to the other prisoners? To the mercenaries?"

"While I was flat on my back, Celestia's Own and the Mountain Battalion broke them."

AP frowned. "Mountain Battalion? Those are the batponies?"

"It has ponies, too, but yes, mostly."

"What happened?"

"Batponies know caves. One night, they found a back entrance to the cavern the prisoners were in and snuck them out. Celestia's Own hit the camp at dawn. Most of them were taken prisoner, which… well, I’m glad they weren’t killed."

"What were the mercenaries even doing?" AP asked.

Redheart smiled. "They had no idea, they just knew they were getting paid to make ponies homeless. We had no idea who or why, at that time. ...I have some theories now. I think it was all related to... hrmm... better not say. That leads to the parts of the story I’m not allowed to tell."

"What happened to you?"

Redheart's face darkened and her jaw worked, as if she was thinking about spitting on the floor. "Lieutenant Armor—he got his commission—and Major Blueblood, the Battalion's deputy commander, all visited the hospital. Princess Cadance was with them. Major Blueblood gave me my Combat Action Badge and the Medic's Star, my POW badge, and my first Wounded in Action badge, and..."

Redheart glared.

"And?"

"And a—" she paused, then her voice turned harsh: "They also brought along a newspaper photographer."

AP raised an eyebrow.

"I looked bad. Gray, sick, thin, sunken cheeks, disheveled mane, black eyes, stuck full of needles. My hometown newspaper ran the picture. My parents and little brothers found it on their doorstep one morning."

"Why... why would they do that to you?"

Redheart shrugged. "It burned my flank at the time. I was furious. Princess Cadance herself was younger than even me, maybe seventeen, eighteen? Celestia wanted Equestria to accept the new Princess. My story gave Celestia a chance to tell everypony how Cadance had gone, unarmed and alone, into the raiders' redoubt to parley for a single wounded pony's life. I understand it was necessary. I just wish they'd found a different pawn."

AP looked at his wife's expression and tapped his hoof on the table, trying to think of a subject change. "What happened to Spring Thunder?"

"I heard he walked upriver for three days, and reported that I'd been captured. Princess Cadance, who was at the command post, was able to track me... somehow. Alicorns get vague when they talk about their magic."

Redheart looked out the window. "Cadance got that bag of antibiotic potion in me just in time. She saved my life. I still resent that she accepted parole on my behalf, though."

He leaned close again and hugged her. "Thank you, love. Thank you for finally opening up."

"The worst part..." Redheart muttered.

He brushed her cheek with his feathers. "What?"

She shook, and cradled her head in her forehooves. The smell of her sweat filled the kitchen. "The letters from Mom n' Dad."

"Oh!"

"They knew I was in combat. The Guard hadn’t deployed in years, so the border raids were in the news. Everypony knew that Celestia's Own was down on the Southern Marches, fighting, taking casualties."

AP shook his head. "I can't imagine how they felt."

"There were a half-dozen kids from Whinnyapolis deployed, counting me. Mom and Dad flew a Blue Star flag in front of the house. The city flew six blue streamers on the flags at every government building. My kid brothers sewed blue stars onto their school bags."

"How old were your brothers?"

"Fourteen." She stood, set more coffee to brew, and sat back down. "The five other local kids were in Third Battalion, so the newspaper ran a blurb on me because I was the only Household trooper. Mom n' Dad gave them my graduation picture from medic's training. Being a medic and a good-looking young mare just made the story juicier." Redheart thunked her forehead onto the kitchen table. AP ran a wing down her spine and kissed her behind the ear.

She continued, her voice muffled against the table: "Well, after all that whoop-de-doo... the Colonel of the local Home Guard and Baroness Whinnyapolis knocked on their door. Mom later told me that Dad opened the door and just... collapsed. My brothers, they were just kids, but they understood exactly what was happening. They knew that having a Peer of the Realm on the front stoop couldn't mean good news."

"Sweet Luna..." AP hissed.

"The Baroness told them I was 'missing, last seen wounded.' Missing. Major Blueblood wrote them a note, Shining Armor wrote them a note, the skipper of the barge wrote them a note. Missing. What could be worse? I could have been dead in an arroyo, my bones never to be found, or swept down the river and out to sea, and I would still stay missing. And the worst part..."

She stood, poured more coffee, and took a few sips before sitting back down with the steaming mug.

AP wrapped Redheart's head in his wings, the feathers a warm blanket around her.

"The next week, the next stupid week, there's that same knock on the door. The Colonel and the Baroness again. Mom n' Dad figured..." Redheart cleared her throat. "But the Baroness told them I wasn't dead, I'd been captured but traded back because I was gravely wounded. Gravely wounded. Dad demanded to be taken to the hospital to visit me, but no civilians were allowed near the front. Every house on the block put out their Equestrian flags until I was out of the hospital. The city changed one of the six blue streamers to red. That picture of me, so sick, getting medals pinned on my pillow, well, that didn't help. Everpony figured...."

She sipped more coffee, thinking for several minutes before continuing. "I wrote a letter home the second day I was awake, to try to get them calmed down. But for the rest of my Guard stint... they said things like 'Come home safe to us' that they had never said before."

AP pulled her close and kissed the top of her snout.

She hugged him back, her forelegs around his neck. "I need a break."

"Sure, but you have to finish—"

“Help me clean the kitchen. We’ve got dishes to wash from breakfast.”

A little while later, they sat on the couch in the living room, and she leaned her head onto his shoulder.

"Thanks for loving me," she said. "There were some times, some days when the entire world seemed too dark to fight for. Having you, and the twins... it's like I can go back in time, and tell twenty-year-old me it was all worth it."

He kissed her nose.

"About four months after I was captured, about a month after I was cleared for duty, we were in our barracks in Canterlot when Celestia herself summoned the whole Battalion..."

Comments! Please! Let me know what you thought!

The entire battalion stood at attention in the central courtyard of the Palace. Being the morning after my twentieth birthday, I had a bit of a hangover. I squinted my eyes against the sunlight and cursed the many bourbon-related decisions I had made the night before.

My medic's armor shone white in the sun, its huge red crosses gleaming, contrasting the line-troopers' and officers' gold.

Celestia stood, facing us, with our Colonel on her left side and Major Blueblood on her right.

"I request eighty volunteers for a dangerous but vital assignment," Celestia said.

Everypony took one step forward.

"Anypony who gets sea- or airsick is not to volunteer. Step back."

About one hundred troopers and officers, evenly split between unicorns and earth ponies, stepped back. Both of the donkeys in the Battalion stepped back, too.

I'd never been near the ocean or on an airship, so I assumed I didn't get motion sickness. The same with Lieutenant Armor, I would later find out.

Celestia looked at Major Blueblood. "Select your cadre, Major."

"Yes, Your Majesty," he said with an elaborate courtier’s bow.

He selected two platoons en bloc, rather than try to forge new teams on the fly, and added a few troopers to fill in the holes left by unreplaced casualties or ponies with motion sickness. I didn’t realize it at the time, but they were grooming Lieutenant Armor for future command. So: his platoon, which included me, was one of the two selected.

I nodded my head and gritted my teeth. I was ready. I was eager. I considered my capture, and my subsequent parole, as blights on my honor. Regardless of the medals. Even if nopony called me 'rookie' anymore.

I wanted a good scrap. I wanted to prove to myself that my first scrap wasn't a fluke, that I really could do the job while the spells sizzled and the arrows flew.

I was literally the only pony in the entire battalion with the Prisoner of War medal and I felt... ashamed. I wanted to prove I had only surrendered to draw them away from Spring Thunder. Prove I hadn't surrendered because I was a coward.

"Medics," the colonel commanded, "go draw standard armor instead of Red Crosses. Where you're going, the laws of civilized war mean nothing."

My jaw clenched harder. I was still eager, but now I was scared, too.

The next morning, our two platoons took a chartered train to Baltimare. We shared the train with two platoons of batponies from the Mountain Battalion.

In Baltimare Harbor, we met a Hippogriffian squadron: two armed airships, and two three-masted merchant galleons that were fitted with disguised gunports and hidden accommodations for troops.

So. Airships and galleons. That explained the bit about air- and sea-sickness.

We stood on a stone wharf under the half-moon, and dawn would be in three hours. Navy ratings kept the press and the public far away. That concerned me—our campaign against the raiders had been in the newspapers, so at least Mom and Dad knew I was off in a scrap. This time, I hadn't even been able to send them a letter, so they had no idea I was about to deploy.

I flicked my tail and frowned at that.

With Amber Grace's death in the desert, I was now our platoon's senior medic. I stood next to our new junior medic. Private First Class Tender Jade was a pegasus stallion, three years longer in service than me, but a rookie with no combat experience, having just volunteered in from Fourth Battalion.

The batponies chittered in their own language, giving me a headache.

"What's going on, Boss?" Jade asked.

I flicked my tail. "I imagine we're going by boat."

"Is that why the Princess said no seasick ponies?"

"Your guess is—"

With a bright flash and a loud teleport, Princess Celestia stood in front of us, on the wooden pier that led to the first hippogriff merchant ship.

"Attention!" shouted Sergeant Flash.

Four platoons of Equestria's toughest stomped into attention. Dozens of leathery batpony wings shuffled for a second, then... silence. The only sound was Baltimare Harbor lapping against the piers.

Almost two hundred ponies and a dozen officers.

Equestria's finest. The cream of the two best battalions on the face of the world. Even with that, two weeks later, less than half of us came home uninjured. A fifth of us would be buried at sea. But, by Celestia, would we ever give better than we got.

As we stood there before her, Celestia flared her wings, and her voice was... sad. I had never heard her speak with such pain before.

"My little ponies," she said, looking at us. She seemed to be making eye contact, one by one, with each of us.

She looked at me for a moment, and then her gaze moved on.

I ground my teeth. This was my princess, and she needed me. My imprisonment and parole were a stain on the honor of Her battalion. I would erase that stain if it killed me.

"My little ponies," she repeated. "I am sending you into danger. This pains me, pains me more deeply than any other duty I have, but it is the Equestrian way that a few of us serve, so that the rest of Ponykind may live in their happiness, never knowing the pain and evil that stalks the world around them."

She pulled her wings in. "I fought. I fought against the disciples of Chaos, and I forged Equestria from the ashes. I have fought at the head of Equestria's legions fifteen times in the ten centuries since. Go into battle knowing that I understand the terror you will feel, knowing that my body broke and bled many times on the field of battle, and that I cried over the bodies of my friends and comrades. Go into battle knowing that I would not ask you to risk your lives if there was any other choice."

Her voice rose, no longer sad, but angry. "Monsters stalk the world. Not monsters of animal instinct and cunning, who kill because nature made them that way. No, these are monsters of the thinking races, raised in civilized nations, who have chosen, of their own free will, to become monsters. Hostis sapiens generis, the common enemy of all races. Pirates prowl the sealanes between Equestria and Hippogriffia, and their coin in trade is murder, rape, cruelty, and enslavement. Many innocents—pony, hippogriff, griffon, yak, deer, abyssinian, all races—are held in bondage."

The smell of nervousness swirled around me, but something else, too. Something burgeoning and deepening as the herd listened to our Princess.

The smell of anger.

Celestia flared her wings again, and actually shouted, "I do not permit this. Equestria does not permit this. You are the point of our spear, our first move on the board—"

(The first move is usually a pawn, I thought.)

"—We, in conjunction with our Hippogriff allies, will find these hornets' nests, and burn them out. We will deliver the bound from their bondage. In the name of Equestria, I swear this. Slavery is a special form of evil, and you will inflict a terrible punishment on those who dare test their hoof at it. You will make them into an example to be remembered for centuries."

Slavery. I shook my head. Slavery. That was beyond mere criminality, beyond even war. Something cold and sour formed in my stomach, and I wanted to make sure those beasts never tried this again.

"These beasts have shown no mercy," Celestia continued, "and shall receive none in return. Expect no quarter in battle, and feel no obligation to offer it. We hope for prisoners for interrogation, but your rules of engagement shall be simple: destroy the enemy. No quarter."

A rumble sounded in the crowd of troopers. Horseshoes scraped on the stone as we shuffled our hooves. We had never heard that order before—we didn't know Celestia had been capable of ordering 'no quarter.'

But for slavers? Pirates? Not one of us objected.

A tall hippogriff stallion, light brown, emerged from the shadows behind Celestia, standing next to her. A simple silver coronet sat on his brow.

Celestia nodded to him. "This is Crown Prince Guidestar, eldest of Queen Novo, and Commodore of this squadron. He commands. Consider the orders of allied officers as if they were orders from ponies."

The hippogriff spoke, his accent cultured and clipped. "The Household platoons will each board one of our merchant ships, and we will trawl our way through the pirates' sights, entice them to fat pickings, and then take their ships in close action. The batponies will board the airships, and will stay high, out of sight, and swoop down to assist the ocean-going ships at the moment battle is joined."

"Any questions?" asked Celestia.

Silence.

I ground my teeth. Slavers. Pirates. Suddenly, I didn't want to go back into a scrap. I had scars, medals, and the bitter taste of experience. But to destroy slavers, and free slaves? Yeah. I would risk my life for that.

I nodded grimly to myself.

Tender Jade shook under his armor, shook in terror.

So did I. I was willing to scrap—but don't you ever think for a moment that I wasn't terrified.

"Board the ships," commanded the Crown Prince. "We sail with the tide."

As we sailed from the harbor, under cover of night, Celestia stood on a promontory of stone and watched us go.

I borrowed a pair of binoculars from a hippogriff sailor, and saw that Celestia was sobbing.

My platoon was aboard the galleon Ocean Swell, and Second Platoon, Alpha Company was aboard the Following Winds with Major Blueblood. The batpony platoons cruised three miles above us on the airships Thunderhead and the Anvil Cloud.

With little to do, since the hippogriff sailors were handling the running of the ship, we soldiers spent most of each day exercising. I ran laps around the upper deck. Pegasi each flew dozens of times up to the airships and back, and we earth ponies shifted the cargo back and forth.

Lieutenant Armor levitated around multi-ton pallets of cannonballs for exercise.

I spent several hours a day in sickbay, treating any ponies with issues. Seasickness set in on the third day, after we left the lee of the Equestrian coastline and took to the open ocean. Lieutenant Armor was the first to go down. Goodness, he was green! Literally green. I vomited if I ate, but I was able to keep water down. Some of the others got so dehydrated that I had to break into my combat supplies and give them fluids.

Thunderhead and Anvil Cloud flew above us, somewhere. Now that we were in the pirates' stretches of sealanes, each airship cast bottled spells of some sort to make them hard to see. Lieutenant Armor explained to us: they weren't invisibility spells, but rather light spells, so that the airships weren't dark against the bright sky.

I, for one, sure couldn't see them.

By that point, we ponies were confined below decks, out of sight, and we kept our weapons and armor close at hoof. The semi-darkness drove me crazy, but canvas air scoops over the skylights ensured the air stayed fresh, at least.

The colonel had told us medics to draw standard armor, but I painted red crosses on the shoulders and back of mine. I always felt naked without them. Sergeant Flash glared at me, but said nothing.

On the eleventh day, just after dawn, a hippogriff officer came below from the top deck and told us: "Stand to! Suspicious schooner closing from windward. A few hours from us."

Everypony donned their armor. I strapped my saddlebags full of medical supplies over my hips.

Tender Jade trotted up to me and sat down. "I just puked," he announced.

I said, "Yeah. That's not a bad plan."

"This is your second scrap, Boss?"

I nodded, and reached down and pulled the strap on his saddlebags tighter. His feathers smelled awful, but then again, we all smelled awful after twelve days without a bath or shower. "Don't lose your kit," I warned.

"I'm scared."

That was weird, really. He was four years older than me, and had joined the Guard the year I was a freshmare in high school. Why was he looking to me for reassurance?

Because I'd seen combat and he had not. I looked at him and said, "I'm terrified."

Is this what it meant to no longer be a rookie? I knew what being in a scrap meant, so that I was even more terrified now than before my first?

We waited, stewing in our own anxiety, for hours. Our ship pretended to run from the pirate schooner, to avoid tipping them off that we wanted them to catch us. A stern chase is a long chase. Stuck below deck, without any windows, I couldn't know if Following Winds, along with the other platoon and Major Blueblood, was still in formation with us or not. I hoped so.

They closed the skylights and we lost the breeze. The air below decks turned soupy with the stench of fear and vomit, and with the skylights closed, we had only the light of oil lamps.

Everypony might have been scared, but we were all ready. Most of the troopers honed their blades on whetstones in a show of nonchalance. I organized and reorganized my medical bags.

Hostis Sapiens Generis. Terrified or not, we all wanted to get a piece of these monsters.

"I hope there are slaves on the schooner," I said.

Jade glared at me. "Boss? That's a horrible thing to think!"

"C'mon," I replied. "A rescue will make a week of seasickness worth it. Don't you want to rescue somecreature?"

He shrugged his wings.

Sweet Luna, did I ever regret voicing that wish.

"Two thousand yards!" a hippogriff called down.

The ship rocked—the crew had all the sail out, clawing into the wind, making a good show of running from the pirates. I got tired of staying on my hooves, and just plopped down to my belly. I closed my eyes, fighting my seasickness.

The gun deck was below us, and through the net-covered gaps in the floor, I saw hippogriff sailors standing to their guns.

"One thousand yards!" they called down a while later. Time was just—I had no idea. Was it a minute or an hour we waited? My heart pounded so hard that I could barely hear the others talking over the thud-thud-thud in my ears.

Time passed. Who knew how long?

"Two hundred yards!" called the 'griff. "Hunker down, they're likely to open up with their chaser gun soon."

Sandbags were piled up, pony-high, against the ship's hull, held in place by cargo nets.

We all hunkered down. If I closed my eyes, I heard the platoon's rapid breathing and smelled our frothy sweat. The motion of the ship's bucking race through the waves battered us all.

I waited. I waited terrified, impotent, and quite frankly pissed off that we were suffering through this interminable chase because of those slave-trading bastards.

"One hundred yards!"

The first cannonball tore through the side of the ship and through the sandbags. It sounded like being inside a thunderclap. The noise battered me and I buried my face against the deck, my hooves over my ears. Sunlight streamed in, and my dark-adapted eyes watered.

"Medic!" somepony yelled, their voice thin over the ringing in my ears. "Medic up!"

The hippogriff guns, on the deck below us, opened their camouflaged gunports, ran out, and salvoed, and my entire world became noise.

That first cannonball had hit one of the troopers and torn her head off. Tender Jade stared at her body and the spreading pool of blood. The dead trooper's squadmates wiped at their faces, cleaning her brains from their eyes.

"Leave her!" I shouted into Jade's ears, and then pointed at Sergent Flash, who had a massive wooden splinter projecting from his left rear leg. He flopped on the deck, panting and gasping. "Triage!"

The other troopers surged up the ramps to the weather deck.

"Hold still," I told Sergeant Flash.

He panted and nodded, biting down on his foreleg. Sweet Celestia, we were going to need Sergeant Flash. This was going to be an ugly scrap and we had to have our senior sergeant. I had to get him on his hooves—or at least his wings—right away! I bit down on the splinter and yanked it out of his leg. Flash yelped and cursed. Jade bandaged him as I spit out little bits of wood.

"Can you move it?" I asked.

Flash bucked twice.

"Missed the tendons," I said. "Give 'em hell, Sarge."

Then the three of us followed the others to the weather deck. Jade and Flash flew, while I galloped, and so to my eternal shame, I was literally the last pony on deck, like some sort of coward!

The upper deck's usual smell of clean ocean breeze was replaced by the stench of gunsmoke.

The pirate schooner was smaller and sleeker than our Ocean Swell. It threw sail and rudder, trying to avoid us and run, now that our disguise was revealed.

Our fore- and after-castles were taller, and our archers barraged their rigging, killing sail handlers and slowing their maneuver.

At the very stern of our ship, two hippogriffs hauled down the merchant flag from the mast, and then ran up the Equestrian and Hippogriffian battle flags.

We raised our hooves and talons and cheered when the colors snapped in the wind.

"Celestia's Own and no quarter!" Lieutenant Armor yelled.

"No quarter!" we screamed back.

"For Queen Novo!" Prince Guidestar yelled, standing on a yardarm.

"For Queen Novo!" We ponies screamed just as loud as the hippogriffs.

My blood pounded, my stomach lurched with every wave.

Something about the salty spray in my face, the wind snapping in the sails, and the bucking of the ship against the waves—I felt so pumped up, so alive. So ready to fight. I never felt quite that way before or since in my life.

The Equestrian colors snapped in the wind. Were there any slaves aboard that schooner? If there were, did they have a porthole or a window they could see through, to see our colors and take heart?

Sweet Celestia, I hoped so.

I looked across the water. Close, maybe thirty yards away, the pirate vessel flew all-black colors from their mast.

"The common enemy of all races," I muttered to myself. "No quarter!"

Our gundeck fired another broadside, and they returned it, several cannonballs arcing close over my head. We had at least five times as many guns, and our ship was larger and more heavily built. We would easily win an artillery duel, but the mission was to take the ship, not destroy it.

My ears went numb. I couldn't tell if I had them perked straight up or tucked down flat. The cannonfire beat me like a bass drum.

It didn't matter. A hippogriff writhed on the deck, a spell-burn across his ribs. I ran to him, ripped off his chest plate, and started working.

Tender Jade looked at me, eyes wide and face pale. His tail thrashed and he clamped his wings tight to his ribs.

An arrow slammed into another hippogriff and she fell from the rigging to the deck.

"Medic up!" screamed one of our troopers.

Tender Jade ran to the wounded sailor.

"Good kid," I whispered to myself.

Blood poured from the spell-wounded hippogriff's beak as he writhed. I put my ear to his chest, listening for the sound of blood bubbling in his lungs, but my ears were still ringing. I heard nothing.

I couldn't hear, but I put my face just in front of his beak, feeling his breath on my lips, and I put the frog of my left hoof against his neck to feel for his pulse.

His pulse seemed... strange. Did hippogriffs have different heart rhythms than ponies, or was his heart damaged? He hugged me, tight around my neck, nuzzling his bloody beak into my cheek, sobbing.

And... then he died. The spell had ruptured his lungs and heart, I think. I never did learn exactly what happened.

"Dammit!" I shrieked, and stomped the deck. His blood dripped off my face.

Our ship hauled around, chasing the faster schooner. Our pegasi and a few hippogriffs carried lines with grapples across to it.

An arrow clipped Lieutenant Armor's foreleg. I turned toward him, and he waved me away, then he cast a shield spell, covering perhaps half the top deck. Arrows and spells glanced off of it.

Tender Jade had his patient under control, the arrow extracted and a bandage over the wound. I hunkered down, peeked over a bulwark, and waited.

I glanced at the dead hippogriff, and thought about his mother.

A cannonball smashed through Lieutenant Armor's shield spell. A flash like lightning dazzled my eyes and I covered my ears. I blinked and shook my head, cleared the dazzle, and heard new cries of Medic up! The cannonball had clipped one of our pegasi, Cosmic Plume, on her foreleg. She fell from the rigging to the deck and I sprinted to her.

She bit onto her other forehoof, fighting not to scream. I grabbed her tail in my teeth and dragged her portside, toward cover, leaving a trail of blood behind her on the wooden deck.

"You're all right," I shouted into her ears. "I've got this!"

Her leg was smashed, bone and gore mixed with flesh and hair. I dug into my pack, grabbed a tourniquet, and cinched it tight, just above the knee.

"Gonna lose my leg?" she said.

I refused to look into her eyes or answer her question.

"This hurts, Doc."

What else was going on? Where was the pirate ship? Where were Following Winds and the two airships? Who else was wounded, who else was dead?

I had no idea.

My entire world was the few inches in front of my face, focused entirely on treating Cosmic. I got the tourniquet arranged just right. Her foreleg was a bloody mess, simply smashed, with no cut to close or laceration to disinfect. Amputation for sure. No way the surgeons could try to salvage it. I grabbed an ampoule of painkiller and jammed it into her thigh.

Her eyes widened and she passed out.

She'll live, I told myself, not sure if I believed it.

The grapples caught and the two ships jerked, bumped, and then smashed into each other, our starboard beam to their port beam.

At the rails, Celestia's Own met with the pirates.

What happened? How long did the scrap on the top decks of those two ships last?

I don't know. I saw only fragments, and I've never pieced together the whole. With my pounding heart and rasping breath, my sense of time was entirely skewed, destroyed. It felt like a decade. I once tried to read the Battalion's official history of the battle, but it just made me sick and I went to the bathroom and threw up and returned the book to the library. (It really annoyed Twilight that she had spent three weeks getting that book for me via interlibrary loan, and that I kept it less than two hours.)

What I do remember: the sounds of spells and swords and pikes hitting flesh. Bones snapping. The stench of burning wood, burning tar, burning sails, burning hair and meat, and spilled brains and blood.

I hunkered over Cosmic, guarding the unconscious trooper, and waited for the next cry of Medic up!

The pirates seemed to be all the races: ponies, griffons, hippogriffs, deer, even one yak.

The yak leaped from the deck of the pirate ship to ours and landed on one of our troopers, and smashed his pelvis into the decking.

The yak bounded away. I ran to our trooper and dragged him, grabbing his mane in my teeth, away from the starboard rail and toward the port bow.

His screaming tore at my ears. Was my hearing recovering, or was he just that loud? An arrow glanced off my armor.

Behind one of the masts, I looked down at his injury and ground my teeth.

He just kept screaming.

I couldn't remember his name. He was a loaner from Echo company, replacing one of our troopers who got disqualified for seasickness.

Blood pooled. He screamed louder. Could I save him? Bones all through his hips were crushed, surely the organs were mashed too. But we had the airships—he could be in Baltimare in fifteen, twenty hours. Could I get him that stable? Maybe. Maybe.

Blood poured. I had to open him up and find that artery, I had a few magical tools in my bag. I could expend one to seal the blood vessel. Hit him with a massive dose of antibiotics. Scoop out the feces if his intestines were ruptured. Get him closed up, stabilized, on fluids and antibiotics...

Across the decks, two more of ours were down, pike or sword slashes. A third went down. Cries of Medic up! cut across the decks. Jade and the hippogriff sickbay attendant were both fully involved with patients of their own.

I looked at the crushed unicorn at my hooves, and knew that the many minutes I would need to try to save him—and my chances weren't good, less than one-in-ten even if everything went perfectly—were minutes other wounded, wounded more likely to live to see their families again, weren't getting my help.

My cutie marks burned. They flared in pain as I chose. I hit him with a painkiller ampoule. A second. A third.

He looked at me, eyes wide, accusing, as he realized.

A fourth ampoule. He stopped breathing and faded away.

I stood and sprinted to a pegasus, Scarlet Wind, with a sword-slash across her ribs. Sucking chest wound. That was a life I knew I could save. A life I did save.

It was the right decision. I know it was. And so many times these years since that day on the deck of that ship, I've felt a sickly tingle in my cutie marks when I remember that unicorn's dark eyes as he realized I was abandoning his treatment and overdosing him on painkillers.

What did that make? Losing the unicorn, getting a seal on Scarlet's sucking chest wound? Ten and nine? Eleven and nine? Figure it out later, I told myself.

Back toward the center of the ship, I jumped over the body of the yak, its spine split just above the shoulders by what looked like a wingblade wound.

While I had attended the unicorn, the batponies arrived, harrying the pirates from above as my platoon skirmished with them at deck level. The airships held position a few hundred feet above us, archers picking off the remaining pirate sail-handlers in their rigging.

Batponies landed on pirates' backs, biting at their necks with fangs, slashing with wingblades.

The Following Winds came alongside the pirate ship, on its opposite beam, grapples flying. The pirate schooner was now trapped between both Hippogriffian galleons.

Major Blueblood, Prince Blueblood, is one of the largest and most obnoxious prats I've known in my life, but I'll give him this: he was the first pony over the railing and onto the pirate ship from his ship, sword swinging and shouting, "Follow me!"

I worked on another earth mare, Quartz Vow: leg wound, arterial bleeding. It wasn't a deep wound. I could fix it, skip the tourniquet, save her leg with a quick application of one of my tools.

From my bag, I fished out an arterial repair appliance. A crystal on its side glowed soft green, showing a full charge, and I held it over Quartz's wound and squeezed against the crystal. Magic flowed around my hooves and down, a soft green aura, and the glow reached her nicked artery, tendrils of magic stitching back and forth as the artery closed and the bleeding slowed.

I looked over my shoulder. The scrap was degenerating into individual knots, no formed line or obvious see-saw across the decks of the ships, just a scattering of brawls. The crystal grew hot in my hooves as it finished repairing her artery and started sealing the wound.

"I'll drag you portside," I said, "then get a unit of plasma—"

A griffon landed in front of me, swinging a sword down at Quartz Vow's exposed throat. I lunged forward, shielding her, but he caught me across the back of the helmet—

—some time later, what in Celestia's name, maybe two or four minutes, but I have no idea, really—

What happened? Goodness, did my head hurt.

I staggered to my hooves, swooning and drooling, my hips soaked with urine.

After taking two steps, I fell flat on my face.

My patient was gone. Had Jade pulled her to safety? Or had she gone back to the scrap?

She wasn't dead where she had lain, and neither was I, so somepony must have dealt with the griffon while my lights were out.

I staggered to my hooves again, I then fell on my side and vomited. Concussion, something told me. I had that little tingle in my cutie marks I always feel when I get the diagnosis right.

Something seemed wrong with the world as I stood again. At that moment, I incorrectly thought it was the smoke that billowed, cutting off vision, blurring everything.

"Abandon ship!" shouted the hippogriff captain, ringing a bell on the forecastle. "Fire! Everygriff to the Following Winds!"

Black smoke spilled from the hatches and skylights.

There was a dead body below decks! The mare killed by the first cannon shot. I frowned at the smoke and ground my teeth. No way, no chance to recover her.

Damn.

I looked to where I'd left Cosmic Plume, the mare with the smashed leg, but Jade had her, flying around the ships, over the open sea, to the Following Wind. That kid was getting a medal, I promised myself. Assuming I lived long enough to recommend him.

The loaner, the unicorn I had given the massive painkiller dose to let him slide quietly away... we weren't going to be able to recover his body, either. Flames already licked around the port bow.

I staggered to the bulwark and glanced fore and aft. Bodies were strewn about the deck of the pirate schooner, and smoke billowed up from its skylights, too. Batponies and troopers from Blueblood's ship stood over several prisoners—one prisoner, a pegasus, spurted blood from a severed wing stump that a batpony was trying to clench shut between his forehooves.

Galloping to the prisoner, I fell on my face twice. What was wrong with me? This was more than just a concussion! I shook my head, cleared it—slightly—and dug into my pack again. I got a tourniquet cinched over the pirate's stump. I caught an arterial spray in the face as I tightened it down.

Could I count a pirate as a life saved?

Yes, I decided. We needed prisoners to interrogate. Eleven saved and nine lost. Or maybe twelve? My brain was really foggy.

I wiped blood from my ears and eyes, hoping whatever disease had led him to piracy hadn't just infected me.

Major Blueblood trotted over and looked down at me, looked at the blood-soaked prisoner with the fresh tourniquet, looked at my bloody hooves and face. "Good job, Redheart. Are you quite all right?"

I had to turn my head to the left to see him clearly. "Yes, sir."

"Your helmet's dented. You're bleeding from underneath it. You're slurring."

"Am not slurring, sir. And the blood's isn't mine."

"Private," Blueblood said, "look at me."

I looked at him. Smoke was getting thick, and I pawed at my face and coughed.

"You pupils are blown," Blueblood said. "Get to the Following Winds. You're concussed."

"Redheart!" came a cry from below deck, from the pirate schooner's holds. "Redheart!"

I looked at Blueblood. He coughed as the smoke thickened.

"You're not fit to fight," he said to me.

"Celestia's Own don't quit, sir."

He sighed and closed his eyes. "Do you speak Ponish? You are concussed."

"Medic!" came a cry from below deck again, Sergeant Flash's voice. "We need Redheart! Medic up!"

"Sir, I can stand. I can fight."

"Go," he said with a shake of his head.

I galloped. But not very well. I kept bumping into things with my right flank and hip. I found myself on my face at the bottom of the stairs, one deck down, coughing in the black smoke, the deck lit by flames. Ash swirled and stung my exposed skin.

Dead bodies were everywhere, the deck slippery with blood and spilled viscera. The stench of burning wood and burning bodies swirled around me. My eyes stung, watering in the vile smoke.

Seeing the bodies by the flickering light of the flames and through the swirling ash, with the incense of burning fur and feathers and sizzling fat, I decided that this, truly, was an appropriate vestibule to the hell that must await slavers and pirates.

On cool autumn nights, when we sleep with the windows open and the clean breeze from the Everfree fills our bedroom... I can still close my eyes and smell that smoke.

Tender Jade, Sergeant Flash, and Lieutenant Armor, along with the still-standing remains of my platoon, held two wounded pirates at spearpoint. Hippogriff sailors tore the ship apart, probably looking for maps or the captain's logs.

"Where were you?" Lieutenant Armor demanded. "I said medic up!"

"Unconscious."

"Oh," he replied. He tilted his head and looked at the blood dripping off my face and the urine off my thighs. "You all right?"

I looked at the bodies and prisoners. What had happened in the minutes I was down?

"Celestia's Own don't quit," I replied.

"Redheart!" Sergeant Flash called from a few dozen feet away, where he was almost lost in the thickening smoke. "We've got slaves."

Celestia, forgive me for earlier having wished we would find somecreatue to rescue.

I wiped ashes from my eyes and coughed.

Blinking away tears and smoke, I studied the situation. A large cell made of wrought iron bars sat against the starboard side. Two unicorn fillies and a hippogriff filly huddled opposite the door.

Lieutenant Armor leaned in close to me and whispered into my right ear.

He disappeared when he leaned in close.

"Oh no!" I gasped.

"Are you paying attention, Redheart?"

I waved my right hoof in front of my right eye.

"Sir, I, I just realized—my right eye is blind."

His magic gently grabbed my head and tilted it this way and that.

"You look fine," he said. "Dent on your helmet."

"Detached retina," I gasped, knowing I was correct. "Celestia!"

"Focus, soldier," Sergeant Flash said to me, his voice gentle. "These three fillies won't let a stallion into their cage. I've got a theory on that, if you follow me?"

I sucked in a deep breath and flicked my ears. I thought I had hated these slavers before, but my stomach absolutely roiled right then with renewed fury. "Yeah. Yeah, I get you."

"See if you can get them to go with you. This ship won't last long."

"Can do!" I replied. I was a trooper of Celestia's Own, wasn't I? Celestia's Own don't quit. I could do anything.

It said so right on our shoulder flashes: PERSEVERE.

It would take more than a concussion and a blind eye to stop me.

...Right?

Two hippogriff sailors came up a stairwell from the deck below, screaming: "Fire! Fire! Everygriff out, everypony go!"

Yeah, fire. Fire might interrupt Celestia's Own.

Flash pointed at Jade and the others. "Take the prisoners and wounded and get out."

I bucked the locked door open and stepped into the cage.

The fillies scooted backwards, away from me, into the opposite corner, screaming and blubbering. I took off my helmet and tossed it outside the cage.

The dent in my helmet was huge. I rubbed the back of my head, and warm wetness soaked onto the fetlock.

"Fillies, I'm Redheart. I'm a medic." I pointed to the red cross I had painted on the shoulder of my armor. "Let me help you."

The two unicorns just sobbed, curled into pitiful balls on the deck. The hippogriff took a step forward and flared her wings in challenge, protecting the others. She looked to be the oldest, maybe ten or eleven.

Flames were creeping toward us, and a piece of wood fell from the ceiling, hitting my thigh just below the armor, leaving a burn. I flicked ash from my ears.

"Let me help you," I said, sitting down on my haunches, and holding my forehooves out. "I'm a mare. I can guess why you were here."

The hippogriff nodded. Ash swirled around her. My butt was getting warm, the fire a deck below us intensifying.

"Redheart!" Lieutenant Armor said. "Smartly, now. The fire will reach the powder magazine. Thirty seconds, then I levitate them."

"No!" shouted one of the unicorn fillies. "No, no, no!"

I turned to him. "Go then! Get out, I've got this."

"Not without those three."

I glanced around. Other than dead bodies, Sergeant Flash and Lieutenant Armor were the only two still below decks with me and the three slaves. The rest were gone.

"This ship is on fire," I said to the fillies. "We have to get you to our ship."

The hippogriff filly looked at Sergeant Flash and Lieutenant Armor. Her tail tucked, covering her underside. She whimpered. "But... but stallions!"

"We're Celestia's Own," I said. "We're soldiers, not pirates. I promise, nopony will hurt you."

The hippogriff shook her head no.

"Mr. Flash here, and Mr. Armor," I said. "They're good stallions. I've known them for months."

She shook her head, tears leaving furrows in the ash on her snout.

"Please, we have to go," I said. "I trust them. Please trust me."

"No. No. No!" The filly stomped.

Ashes swirled thickly now, and I rubbed them out of my eyes. My right eye might have been blind, but it could still feel pain. Ash burned my flanks, chest, and ears. Anywhere the armor didn't cover.

"We're Celestia's Own," I said. "Celestia hoof-picked these stallions, she hoof-picked every one of us."

I turned and showed her my other shoulder, the one etched with our unit flash, with Celestia's cutie mark. "See? Celestia herself. We're her personal guard. Celestia sent us to save you. Can't you trust Celestia?"

The two unicorns looked up and nodded. The hippogriff looked at one, then at the other, and then nodded to me. "Celestia?"

"She sent us for you," I said. "Honey, please. We have to go."

She took two steps, and jumped up to hug me. The unicorn fillies joined the hug. They trembled, and I could feel their ribs. I lifted the three fillies onto my back. Half-starved, they weighed almost nothing.

Flash hovered a few feet off the deck and flapped, pegasus magic blowing a clear pathway in the smoke for us, his wounded leg hanging down and dripping blood, the bandage soaked through. The lieutenant lit his horn, making just enough light for us to find a stairway up.

Burns and smoldering ash covered all six of us. The hippogriff filly's feathery tail smoked. We all coughed and choked. At the top of the stairway, we broke out into the sunlight on the deck. Lieutenant Armor was the last one out.

We six were the last to board the Following Seas. It cut loose from the pirate schooner, which was still tied to the Ocean Swell. Both ships were now fully engulfed in flames. Following Seas made sail and ran from the burning wrecks.

The Ocean Swell sank, burning as it slid under, the ocean sizzling against it. The Equestrian and Hippogriff flags still flew proudly from the mast as it went down.

The pirate schooner blew up, flaming hunks of wood arcing high. The blast shook us and we all covered our ears.

Nineteen Hippogriff Navy and twenty-one Royal Guard bodies went down with the two ships.

The hippogriffs who weren't busy with the rigging or the wounded knelt around the body of Crown Prince Guidestar, sobbing and holding each other.

I whispered to a hippogriff, "Does your queen have another heir?"

He wiped tears from his eyes. "Her Highness, Princess Skystar. But she's just a chick, not even walking."

A hippogriff mare poured buckets of clean water over the fillies, washing away the ash and cooling their burns. I stripped my armor, then she poured a few buckets of water over me.

As the cold water sluiced over my rising blisters, washing away the ashes, sweat, blood, and urine, I stood there for a moment, my shakes starting. That was different from the scrap in the desert, where it had been hours before I got the shakes. This time, at least, I didn't vomit. Small favors.

I checked over the three freed slaves. The fillies had no broken bones, but lots of infected cuts and abrasions and the fresh burns. Plus the injuries they had received from their "duties" aboard the ship, of course.

I cleaned, salved, and bandaged their cuts and burns. After I hit the three fillies with painkillers, they passed out. Tender Jade then cleaned the back of my head and stitched the laceration where my helmet had split my scalp, and he bandaged my burns.

"Boss," Jade said, "Those are second-degree burns you've got. Let me sedate you."

"No."

"But—"

"Those three fillies trust me," I replied. "If one of them wakes up, I need to be awake for her."

"Boss, you've got to be in pain." He pointed to the bandages covering my ears and lower legs.

"I have a concussion," I told Jade. "Keep me awake. No sedation."

"That's an old mare's—"

"Do as I say."

"At least take a painkiller, if you won't let me put you under."

"Fine." I took the pill he offered, but it made damn little difference.

Over that first hour, blisters rose across every part of my body my armor hadn't covered.

I waved my right hoof in front of my face.

My right eye was still blind.

Every few minutes, I checked it, to see if my vision would suddenly—

Still blind.

After our ship got turned bow-on to the wind, the airship Thunderhead circled down and moored to us. The wounded (which included all the prisoners we took), the three freed slaves, and I were all herded or levitated aboard. I tell myself I was herded onto the Thunderhead because I was the only female medic, and the three fillies wanted me close.

What I didn't want to admit was the truth: I was being medically evacuated again, leaving my unit behind again. My concussion and blinded eye both needed medical attention, and my burns were serious. Sergeant Flash and Lieutenant Armor's burns were just as bad as mine, and they, too, were on board the Thunderhead as it rose into the sky and turned for Baltimare at top speed.

The airship crew gave the three fillies a tiny cabin below deck. I curled into a ball outside their door, guarding them, and cried into my tail, hoping nopony would notice my tears.

Tender Jade politely pretended not to notice, and went topside to treat the other wounded.

The airship's hippogriff captain came to me. She asked, "How are your young patients?"

"Bad," I said. "You can guess what their duty was on the pirate ship."

She nodded. "I can. How are you?"

I shook my head and looked away from her. "I've lost the sight in my right eye. I can't... they'll make me leave the Guard! All I've ever wanted is to be a nurse, an emergency room nurse, and I won't be able... with only half my eyesight." Tears ran down my nose again.

"You saved several lives," she said. "Especially those three fillies."

Could I count them? Talking them out of the brig before the ship burned, blew up, and sank?

Yes.

Fourteen, I guess. Fourteen and nine? Fourteen and eleven? Fifteen?

Celestia, who could keep track?

The hippogriff touched my withers and gave me a small squeeze before returning to her duties.

Eighteen hours later, just after dawn, with the Following Seas and the rest of my platoon far behind us, we landed in Baltimare. A team of female doctors, nurses, and counsellors took my patients from me, and then I was hustled into the hospital myself.

I was in for one of the worst months of my life as they treated my concussion, my burns, and my eye, but we had delivered the bound from their bondage, as Celestia had charged us to do.

Those two unicorn fillies got reunited with their surviving families. They send me a letter now and then, and cards at Hearth's Warming. Ever since the Storm King's defeat, and the re-emergence of the Seaponies as the Hippogriffs, that third filly has sent me a few letters, too. She's married now, and has chicks of her own.

That ship's hold was a vestibule of hell, with the swirling ash and the stench of rendering fat and charring bone, but I delivered those three fillies from hell and returned them to the land of the living.

When I still hear the cannonfire in the middle of the night, when I wake up in a cold sweat remembering the feel of the doctor's spell in the back of my eyeball, I sneak out of bed, re-read those fillies' letters, and tell myself it was worth it.

Comments are always welcome!

Redheart's voice trailed off. She shook, sitting next to AP on the couch in their living room. Winter wind shook the house. He hugged her, and kissed her on the nose, tasting the salty tears matting her coat. "My love," Redheart whispered. "It—it feels good to tell you…"

He took her head in his hooves and looked into her right eye. "It looks fine," he said.

"Doctor Looky Loo at work says she can see some residual damage," Redheart said, "when she checks in there with her 'scope, but my vision is good enough. It's not like I'm a Wonderbolt."

He kissed her ear.

She looked at the mess, the twins' toys scattered everywhere, and smiled.

"I'm hungry," Redheart said, and looked at a clock. "Goodness! I've been talking forever. We're way past lunchtime, but I'm not in the mood to cook."

After dressing in heavy winter coats, scarfs, and hats, they trotted to Café Hay.

"How's your son?" Redheart asked Savoir Fare, the café's host.

"The cast comes off soon, but I don't think he'll want to try ice skating again this winter. My wife and I, well, we wanted to thank you again."

Redheart frowned, and nodded. "I'm just glad we were there at the pond. That break needed to be splinted just so. Can we have the private dining room, please?"

"Of course, Madame Redheart. Anything for you!"

They trotted through the open dining room, following Savoir Fare. Flitter and Cloudchaser, twin sisters and Redheart's fellow Home Guard reservists, waved at Redheart from their table.

Cloudchaser still wore a brace around a rear leg from that past summer's terrible incident with the diamond dogs, and her bangs hung more messily than usual over an angry scar along her forehead. The twins smiled and nodded to Redheart. "Sarge," they both said.

Redheart nodded back. "Ladies."

AP knew he was missing something passing between the three citizen-soldiers.

Deep in the back of the restaurant, behind a closed door, Redheart cradled a mug of hot chocolate in her hooves.

"My third Wounded-in-Action," she said, "And the last one I can tell you about, was a psychological wound. I mean, I broke some ribs, punctured a lung, lost a few teeth, but mostly a psychological wound."

AP reached out and touched her forehooves with his. "Were you... what happened? Were you captured again? Were you... you... like those three fillies?"

"No," Redheart said. "I killed. Me, with my red-cross-and-hearts cutie mark, and my special talent for healing... I am a killer."

As always, I welcome constructive comments!