She flew low through the forest, and spied a foolish fat rat gnawing on a gourd by day. She gave a rat-terrorizing screech and pounced. The rat jumped away, but she snatched it in mid-leap. Harpies were the champions of snatch! The Harpilympics featured the two-claw snatch and the one-claw snatch and the single, double and triple snatches, and the winners were so fast that the motion of their claws could not be seen; the prey went from ground to mouth seemingly of its own volition. She had seen one prize-winning demonstration in which a mouse, rat and rabbit had been snatched, with the first finishing in the mouth of the second, and the second in the mouth of the third, and the third in the mouth of the harpy, all seemingly in a single blurred motion. Triple snatch galore!
There was a rumble behind her. She flew up, startled, and turned in air to look back, the rat still struggling in her claws. A cleft opened in the ground, and from it rose a fat man in a purple robe. “Purple Adept!” she screeched, astonished and hardly pleased. “Hast come to dispatch me at last, thou bulging sausage?”
The ground closed, leaving him standing, unperturbed. “Merely to make thee choose, bird brain,” he said equably.
“An I had a choice, would I choose to snatch thine eyeballs from thy foul face, and thy tongue too, and wrap them that they squirt not too much when I chomp them,” she screeched.
“An thou not be quiet, hen, willst thou hear not mine offer.”
“This for thine offer, offal!” she screeched, letting go the very foulest of droppings. “An thou meanest not to torture me to death, get thy presence gone from here ere I suffocate from the mere smell of thee!”
“The offer be this: resume the leadership o’ thy Flock, or be afflicted with the return of thy tailfeather itch, ten times as bad as before.”
He had certainly pinpointed the opposite extremes of her preference! But she knew better than to trust this. “Where be the catch, flatus?”
“There be a task for thy Flock to perform.”
“Harpies perform tasks not!” she screeched. “We be dirty birds o’ prey, not beasts o’ burden!”
“This be a mock combat situation,” he explained. “Thou must engage in a siege ‘gainst a vampire Flock, the one to capture the flag o’ the other and lose not its own.”
“Mock?” she screeched, still looking for the catch she knew was there. “The only one I wish to mock is thee, thou miserable excuse for feculence!”
“Teeth and claws be nulled; their action seems real, but the victim suffers mere loss o’ function, not o’ limb or life, and after the siege be done, all victims recover without further effect.”
“What kind o’ combat be that?” she screeched. “Action without the splatter o’ blood be no action at all!”
“I agree with thee, stinkfeather, but such be the rule. It be part o’ the compromise hammered out with Stile.”
“With Stile! Thou hast no dealings with the Blue Demesnes!” But this interested her more than she could afford to let on. If some way offered to defect to Stile…
“This siege be ‘gainst a Flock o’ bats supporting Stile. It be one o’ three, and two o’ three gives the final victory. Canst snatch a flag from bats, dangledugs?”
Now the catch was coming clear. She wanted to defect to the side of the Adept Stile—and here she had to oppose it. The Purple Adept, suspecting this, had devised an exquisite torment: she would have to labor to deny Blue the ultimate power. Was she to do this, as she knew she could, or suffer the torment of the tenfold tailfeather itch? She knew the Adept was making no bluff; his threat was well within his power of implementation.
She was a coward; she knew it. She could face dismemberment or death, but not the tailfeather itch. It would tear her up to do this to Stile or his minions, but she could not face the alternative. “Aye,” she murmured.
“Methinks I did not hear thee, frightface,” he said. “Dost agree to serve?”
“Aye,” she said reluctantly.
“I saw no ripple.”
“Aye!” she screeched, and now the ripple radiated out, committing her to her ultimate. She would do her very best to accomplish the thing she hated to accomplish.
“Aye,” he agreed, smiling smugly, and his cleft in the ground opened and took him in.
Phoebe surveyed the grounds of the siege personally. She well understood the importance of terrain, having had to hunt alone for the years of her tailfeather itch; a hunter who knew her ground had a significant, often critical advantage over one who did not. The key to success was to drive the prey into terrain unfamiliar to it; then it could readily be trapped and snatched.
In this case the prey was a flag; it could not be driven or spooked. But the importance of knowing the ground remained, for creatures would be carrying that flag. Bats would be guarding it, thus they were prey. Also, bats would be seeking to steal her own flag, and any who got hold of that flag had to be caught immediately. The parallels to genuine hunting were close enough.
Her flag was mounted at the top of a towering pine tree. She had no choice about that; the Adepts had determined the regions and placements beforehand. The bats would fly low, using the concealment of the mixed forest, perhaps even crawling up the trunk of the pine tree to reach the flag. Once one of them got it—the thing was of very light fabric, so that it weighed almost nothing—that bat would head for the sky, using its superior speed to outdistance the pursuit of the harpies. The moment the two flags were put together by one creature, the siege would be over, and the victor the team of the one who held the flags.
She would have to assign hens to guard that tree, to nab any bat who tried to climb it. That was simple enough. Prevention was obviously the best defense; she had to see that no bat got close to that flag.
She flew across to the enemy flag. This was mounted on a pole atop a small mountain peak. It would be easy to access it by air, but the hens would be readily spotted. Bats in manform would be able to pick off the harpies, using bows and arrows. That was the problem: while a harpy was more than a match for a bat or several bats, a manform vamp with a good weapon was a match for several harpies. The hens could fly high, out of range of the arrows, but would have to descend to within range to snatch the flag. That was no good; they would be riddled in short order. The arrows, like other weapons, might have only a temporary effect, but the siege could be lost if they made a careless approach.
She flew in increasing spirals around the full region, peering at everything. Here there was a chaparral, a thick tangle of small evergreen oak trees, a fairly effective barrier to the manform but not to batform. There was an inlet of the eastern sea, tapering from broad to narrow and finally ending at the mouth of a small river. That would be easy for either form to fly over, but the manforms would have to swim, where they would be vulnerable to harpy attack. There was a ridge of hills angling roughly between the two flags, that would serve as excellent cover for manforms with weapons. There were fire-cleared glades, and patches of thin forest; the cleared regions formed a random and fairly intricate pattern that could offer both promise and danger for infiltrators.
The east part of the siege area was limited by the Eastern Sea that surrounded the East Pole. This was infested by saltwater predators and was unsafe for any land or air creatures not protected by magic. But the inlet was fresh water, from the river, and she spied no dangerous marine creatures there. Interesting. This region was as new to the bats as to the harpies, being neutral ground; the bats might not realize the significance of the fresh water here.
She completed her survey. Bats were doing a similar job; this was a time of truce before the siege. She ignored them, and returned to her headquarters. She had learned what she wanted, and was now working out a strategy for victory.
For she had decided: she might wish that the Adept Stile’s side could win, but she had made a deal, and she would give it her best. The bats would only beat the hens by out-sieging them and she doubted they could do it. Strategy had always been her forté, as the Purple Adept had obviously known;
some other hen might have botched the siege, but Phoebe would not.
Part of her wished that the bats had a superior strategist who could defeat her, so that Stile could win. But the rest of her knew that would be terrible for her, and not just because a loss would beget the tenfold tailfeather itch. She had pride, after all; she had to prove she was the best, no matter what the cost. Prove that she had not really been corrupted by decency. She hated this, but it was the way it was.
Now she faced her Flock. “There be our flag,” she screeched. “Across the valley there, be the bats’ flag, mounted on a hill. The game be this: we must snatch the enemy flag and bring it back to join ours, and that be the victory. But we may not touch our own flag, only the enemy. An they take it, we must destroy who carries it, and leave it lie, and guard it till we bring theirs to it. Questions?”
“Can we kill them?” a horrendous old harpy screeched. “Nay, Sabreclaw. But we may try. Our claws be enchanted so they poison not, only stun, and the same for the bats’ weapons. This be a play-siege, but do thy worst, for it will seem real, and only when it ends will the wounded and dead recover.”
“Those bats be under the tutelage o’ Vodlevile and his cub Vidselud,” a grizzled old harpy screeched. “They be friends to Stile, and be no fools. What be our strategy?”
“Right dost thou be, Hawktooth,” Phoebe screeched. “They be no mean adversaries. They have both speed and power o’er us, in one form or t’other. But our strategies be two. For the defense thou willst govern, taking thy place in the tree below and snatching and dispatching any bats who come near. But beware, for thou willst have too few hens to do it well; thou must be cunning and waste no effort on trifles, lest they overwhelm thee and take the flag and fly it high and fast beyond thy means to reco’er.”
“Too few hens?” Hawktooth screeched. “Why?”
“Because we need the rest on offense. As we do our job, thou willst not be hard-pressed long.”
At the word “offense,” the members of the Flock pressed in more closely. That was what they liked.
“Thou, Sabreclaw, willst lead the attack on the enemy flag, with six tough birds o’ thine own choosing,” Phoebe continued. “But this be no easy thing.”
“Give me six foul hens and false, and there be naught to stand in our way!” Sabreclaw screeched boldly. “We’ll smear those bats into spatters o’ blood!” There was a raucous chorus of agreement. How these birds loved blood! This was of course the root of the traditional enmity between harpies and vampires: competition for blood.
“Nay,” Phoebe screeched, quelling the commotion. “This be a secret attack, avoiding mayhem.”
There was disgust, horror and outrage. “What kind o’ attack be that?” Sabreclaw demanded righteously. “An attack without blood be no mission for a harpy!”
“Blood with no victory be no mission for us,” Phoebe countered. “Dost want to hangfeather in shame for losing the siege to mere bats?”
They had to admit, grudgingly, that she had a point, albeit a technicality. They wanted blood and victory, not one or the other.
A nasty thought pushed into Phoebe’s consciousness, like a tapeworm in the gut of an otherwise edible morsel. Was she assigning the most ferocious hen of the Flock to this mission in the hope that Sabreclaw would be unable to control her lust for bloodshed, and would go on a rampage and mess up her mission, so that they would lose the siege? That would bring no direct shame to Phoebe, if it was clear that her strategy would have been effective. Yet if it were also clear that she could have assigned a hen who would have obeyed orders…
She had to do this right. “Thou willst commit to doing this right, or needs I must appoint an other squad leader,” Phoebe told Sabreclaw firmly. “The success o’ the siege depends on this, and the shame be mine if there be not discipline in the ranks.”
Sabreclaw had to commit to doing it right, lest she be summarily removed from the action. “But an there be no other way, then—”
“Then blood,” Phoebe agreed. “Likely once thou dost put thy claw on the flag, and before thou canst rise beyond the range o’ their weapons, there be action. But before then, thou and thine be the meekest o’ sparrows.”
“Aye, and dragons after!” They were coming to terms with it, realizing that the blood would likely be only delayed, not aborted. “But how do we get close? That flag be in plain view, and the bats be not batty enough to leave it un-guarded!”
“Precisely,” Phoebe agreed. “That be exactly why the sneak-snatch be necessary. Another squad will mount the overt attack, distracting the bats, whilst thou dost lead thy squad down under cover o’ the trees and through the chaparral—” Here she paused to scratch a diagram in the dirt below her perch. “Needs must scurry like rats, wings furled, to pass this thicket, but the bats, assured we will not be there, will leave it unguarded or lightly guarded. Take out the guard silently and ferry through single file. Here there be water, an inlet o’ the Eastern Sea. Find the old tree fallen into it, and grasp the trunk o’ it and climb down into the water—”
“What?!”
“And under the water,” Phoebe continued relentlessly. “It be a well-known fact that most creatures believe that harpies hate water—”
“We do hate water!” Sabreclaw screeched.
“And lack the gumption to go near it. But the truth be that though harpies may have a strong and justified aversion to water, they be not afraid o’ it, and can handle it when the dictates o’ courage demand. Dost disagree?”
There were evidently a number in the Flock who wanted to disagree, but none did, oddly.
“By going under the water, canst pass where no bat expects,” Phoebe explained. “The inlet be narrow here, and the water fresh, so no saltsea predators be there. Hold breath, set claws in sunken tree, pull along, and the farthest branch be at a clutch o’ reeds the other side, concealment for emergence. Crawl out unobserved, seek cover o’ nearby forest arm, and continue on toward the mountain bearing their flag. Take ne’er to the air, and hide whene’er a bat shows, making no disturbance. Then, when there be no chance to get closer unobserved, make a mass rush for the flag, taking out all bats in range, and snatch it and wing for the sky and bring it back to join ours.” Phoebe fixed Sabreclaw with a steely gaze. “Canst do?”
Sabreclaw hesitated, but realized that this was the way it had to be. “Can do,” she agreed. It was obvious that she dreaded the crawl under water, but saw the merit of the plan, and knew she had to prove that harpies weren’t afraid of anything.
“Then pick thy squad,” Phoebe said. “When the siege starts, take thy time, go down out o’ sight when none be watching, and let none see thee advance. The success o’ this siege be in thy claws, and the glory be thine an ye succeed.”
Sabreclaw set about selecting her squad of tough hens, and Phoebe went on to more routine matters. The remaining hens were assigned to offense and defense, and there was one suicide squad who would make a determined raid on the enemy flag at about the time Sabreclaw’s squad was passing under the water, to draw the attention of the bats. It was all intended to seem conventional enough, as if harpies lacked the wit for innovation or subtlety, and with luck the bats would underestimate the opposition.
The siege began at noon, and would continue until settlement. The harpies knew they had to win it by day, because the bats were supreme by night. But Phoebe figured to do it in the first hour; if her sneak ploy failed, they would be in deep droppings. She had rehearsed all the squads in their tasks; in addition to the flag defense and the flag offense, there were the mock offense and the general defense to be seen to. Phoebe herself would hover above and go where needed to buttress a problem area.
She went forward with her lieutenants Hawktooth and Sabreclaw, to meet the bat leader Vodlevile, his son Vidselud, and a female bat. When the bats assumed their manforms, Phoebe was amazed. “Suchevane!” she screeched, recognizing the loveliest of all the vamps. “How earnest thou to be here? Methought thou wedded to the Red Adep
t!” For the alien from Proton-frame, Agape, had exchanged bodies with the unicorn Fleta eight years prior, and come to Phoebe for help, then gone on to the Red Adept, who had finally solved her problem. In the process Suchevane had gotten to know the Adept; she was beautiful and lonely, and he was powerful and lonely, and one thing had led to another, and now they had their mixed-breed son, Al. In the old days such a union would have been impossible, but the rovot and the ‘corn had shown the way.
“The Flock be short a member, so I returned,” Suchevane replied.
“But this be a siege!” Phoebe protested. “It be very like war. We dirty birds thrive on it, but thou dost be too delicate for aught like this.”
“Delicate? I raised the child o’ a troll!”
She had a point. “Well, the mayhem be but mock,” Phoebe said. “ ‘Twere else a shame to mangle thy pretty features.”
“Aye,” Suchevane agreed, smiling. Such was her beauty, despite her advancing age and state of motherhood, that the harpy minions were nauseated.
“Thou knowest the Adepts, human folk, and animals be watching,” Vodlevile said. “E’en as their magic nulls our weapons, it sends the image o’ this activity out. This be why none o’ us may contact other beyond the demarked region, lest they learn things illicitly.”
“Aye,” Phoebe screeched moderately. “We mean to win, an all will see how we do it. There be no rules o’ conduct here.”
“Save touching not thine own flag,” he said. “Then let us part now, and next we meet as combatants.”
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