Harpy!

“Harpy!” I hiss.

Cassie gasps and mutters a quiet prayer.

In a blink the terror of Rosa and I’s encounter with one of these foul monsters comes flooding back into me. Flitting by in a mere second I see it all. The argument. The raw helpless horror of watching Rosa being carried away. The frantic hunt for her, despair gripping my guts even as love drove me on to a hopeless cause. Hearing her! Seeing her! Too late! Too late! But still I followed, ready to give my life for her body if nothing else. And then…the lair…the battle…the **** chaos…the blood…the aftermath…the joy of seeing my beloved alive…and then, **** and that golden-hued void in my memory. It was a **** Rosa had traded her sight and her soul to a god to bring me back from. I still carried my **** scar on my ribs but the wounds that Harpy left went far deeper than flesh and bones.

I spin back toward the others, my focus locking on Rosa who had begun to wander away from Catalus to smell some wild roses on a nearby bush. FUCK! Why had they wandered away from the cover of the horse!?

“HIDE!” I shout, then immediately wince as my panicked bark echos up and down the mountain valley.

Instantly Rosa stands erect, ears perked and eyes wide. She didn’t know what was happening and she didn’t need to know, my tone had told her all she needed. She then hunches lower and bares her small fangs in an effort to look less of an **** target. Frantically her fingers scramble into the bag of the magical cooling tesserae she kept on her belt so that she might borrow their energy to get a vague outline of her immediate surroundings. Collywaddle turns to look at me, brows furrowed in confusion at the urgency in my voice at odds with the tranquility of our surroundings. It only takes a moment for lifelong **** instincts to kick in however as she grabs Rosa’s arm and hauls her for the very rosebush they’d been heading toward. Thorns be damned she drags them both right into the hear to the bramble. Suddenly alone Catalus snorts and begins stamping and turning in place, his well-bred instincts sensing danger even though he could see none.

With Rosa hidden my eyes pan skyward just in time for a piercing shriek to split the babbling peace of the rest stop. Gods damn me and my ill disciplined shout! At my side Cassie, arrow nocked and bow half drawn, searches the orange skies with narrowed eyes. Her head suddenly snaps left.

“There!” She nods in the complete opposite direct from where we’d heard the screech. Indeed, like a smudge of ink dropped onto a clean parchment, the black form of a distant harpy sails toward us high above the stunted mountain trees.

“But…the cry?” I swing around to see another swooping in from up the mountain’s slope. Two! And this one was far closer and closing fast! Cursing myself again, this time for my lack of caution, I focus onto our skittish stallion. More specifically I hone in on my blade that was right now nestled among the load he carried. “Stay close!” I say to Cassie, trusting her to keep up as I bound back toward where we’d left the others. And that is when I see it. Soaring straight down the trail we’d just passed to get here, a third! “Gods have mercy!”

My long legs devour the ground between me and my horse but not as swiftly as that harpy’s glide. It was close enough now to see that mottled gray skin, those round owl-like eyes, that wide fang toothed maw, and those razor sharp fangs I’d seen during my first encounter. The spirited Andalusian turns toward the monster and rears up, front legs kicking the air where clawed **** was about to strike him. Two stones come hurtling out of the rose bush to careen off of the harpy’s twisted visage to throw off it’s concentration just before it’s strike. It veers left to avoid Catulus’ lethal hooves but cannot escape the streaking arrow that flies past my should and into its.

The harpy lets out a shriek as it crashes into a mass of low juniper not ten feet to my right. I spare a moment to peer over my shoulder to see that Cassie had stopped to loose her arrow. FUCK! “Keep up!” I call. “Stay together!” Catalus, bred for war but only partially trained in it, was now in a panic. I whinnied and snorted, rearing up again only to land to kick out with both rear hooves. “Easy, boy!” I say as I am **** to pause just outside the steeds snapping hooves to find an opening to get to my sword. Gear and tools clatter to the ground, sent flying in all directions as he tries to fight in the direction of all three at once. Behind me I hear two more twangs of Cassie’s bow but I could not spare even a glance. And then…NOW!

I see my opening as he turns his flank toward me and leap forward. At last I feel the handle of what was my father’s old pugio transformed by magic and wrap my hand around it, just in time for the harpy who first shrieked to come hurtling into me! I grunt as my wind is knocked from me. Pinned between horse and harpy I am taken with them over the edge of the road and into the rocks and boulders and scratching shrubs beyond. For a moment there is sheer chaos as the three of us thrash among the jagged stones. The stallion’s scream, the harpy’s shriek, kicking hooves, flashing talons, snapping teeth, and my own deep bellows and kicking all combine into this song and dance of ****. I hear the crack of a bone snapped clean in two and the tearing of talon down flesh. The smell of blood and oily harpy ichor fills the air.

At last I find purchase to heave my blade free. My training from the northman Toke takes over. Without thought or delay I act against the threat. For a moment…time seems to slow…as the three feet of gleaming crimson steel and bronze arcs through the air…then cleanly through the neck of the foul harpy. It’s shrieking is cut off at once. The body falls one way, thick amber blood spurting from the stump of its neck, while its head goes rolling down the slope the other.

I knew my horse had taken the worst of that melee but I had no time to check on him. Scrambling back up onto the road I see taking aim on the first one she’s spotted that was swooping low with claws at the ready to pluck her and carry her back to its lair as that one had done with Rosa in another Apennine pass. With her eyes up she does not see the one that had crashed limping out of the juniper, one bloody wing dragging behind it.

“RAAHHH!!!” I let out a battle cry that would have made Toke proud as I charge the grounded harpy. As I hoped it would it spins to face me, it’s jagged teeth bared.

Suddenly rolling to my side comes Collywaddle, a slender four inch blade in her pudgy hand.

“Protect Rosa!” I cry.

“She told me to protect you!”

Even as the harpy approached I glance right to see just the tips of Rosa’s horns sprouted up among the roses. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot another figure. Small and as orange as the brilliant evening sky. Sitting calmly in the center of the road about 30 feet back the way we came sat the fox Danae, her eyes aglow with green energy. Her pointed nose moves left to right as she follows the trajectory of the harpy bearing down on Cassie.

I turn back just in time to watch Cassie’s arrow loose…only to be shattered mid-air by creature’s onyx sharp talons. She stumbles back into the bush, grasping for another arrow though she would not have the time to let it fly.

I start to run. Even without the grounded harpy in my way there was no way I could get there in time but I had to try. Just behind me Colly pads along as quick as she could.

The harpy rears up in front of us, it’s one good wing flaring out to block distract and block our path around it. I growl in frustration as behind it the other one hurtles down into Cassie, talons outstretched!

And then…it disappears! The harpy’s talons never reaches Cassie as it simply ceases to be there! At nearly that same instant I hear a sickening, fleshy crunch impact the road behind me, the **** sending vibrations through the paving and up into my feet. With a pitiful, wet gurgle the harpy wheezes its final breath. Rosa!

I had no time for praise or questions however as the remaining harpy was closing in. It lets out a deafening, blood-curdling shriek, it’s mouth opening impossibly wide. It’s spittle spraying into my face I hold firm even though fear gripped my heart. Had the others not been there I might have fled. But as they were that simply was not an option. I grit my teeth and lift the sword in front of me and enter a stance, my body taut and poised for either offense or defense depending on what was about to happen in the next five seconds. The blade humming before me I watch as the sticky amber blood from the first harpy slowly disappear from the face of my blade. What? For just an instant my eyes pull focus back from the harpy to center on the sword.

Canny foe that it was the harpy seizes on my subtle shift of focus and spring forward! It suddenly shrieks as a slice opens up along the bottom of its left sagging tit. Rolling like a green tumbleweed Collywaddle continues her momentum right past the harpy and under its wing. Enraged the monster slashes at the goblin but finds only empty air as Colly had not stopped to fight but was making tracks away from it. With her goal of distraction achieved Colly was getting as far from the fracas as her stumpy legs could carry her.

The brief distraction was all I needed. With a swift overhead strike I bring my blade down into the shoulder of the harpy…and three-quarters of the way through it! My sword cleaves clavicle, ribs, organs, sinew and spine before finally embedding itself into the creature’s pelvic bone. The upper half splits like firewood in front of me, its retched gore spray back along road as it slowly falls away from me. It wing and legs twitch in its **** throes but it’s voice was no more.

The battle was over.