We Were Soldiers

"Ladies! Ladies!"

The swirl was a vibrant red, excited and nervous. Smaller mares bobbed around their elders, preening and gossiping.

"That's enough chit chat now girls. Let's get organised."

Beside me, Elektra snorted, a thin stream of bubbles bursting squirting from her nose. She knew as well as I that getting three mares facing in the same direction, let alone agreed on a course of action was as hard as... well, it was hard. Yet here we were, the unmated females for the whole colony, plus half the mated mares too. Swimming in new waters.

"Are you done?"

Asking Elektra to help me was proving to be my best idea since I came up with this whole disturbing notion in the first place. Her voice cut through the chatter, and slowly the group turned to face us. Their colour darkened here and there, from a gregarious scarlet to a sullen crimson.

"There's no need to be like that."

I nudged her surreptitiously with my snout, before her lack of tact got us into a current we couldn't swim clear of. That quality, and the fact that this whole thing was my fool idea, were what had kept her from being in charge of this raiding party. Everyone was a little scared of her, even her best friend. She subsided, settling down towards the silt a little to give me a clear view of my troops.

"I still don't see why we have to..."

I cut in, before we fell back into debating what we would be doing, or why.

"Ebb and flow! We agreed. We all agreed. The Yellow colony will put unacceptable strains on our grazing. The only way to reduce that is to remove the colony. We have to strike them where they are vulnerable, and that's the crèche. And we have to be organised, which is why we need someone in charge."

I fixed the first complainer with a cold gaze, and was pleased to see her tail tip suffuse with a pinkish cast.

"Are we all clear? We enter the crèche, kill the brood males and empty their pouches of eggs."

It was so quiet you could hear the tide coming in. The brutality of it. In that moment I wanted to race back to Andros and press my face to his belly, to listen to the foals growing inside him. Our foals.

Slowly, each mare lowered her head, partly in acquiescence but partly in the same grief I was feeling.

"For the colony, sisters, for the colony."

Red turning to brown, we fade into the undergrowth.