16. Wings and Talons
16
Wings and Talons
Calliste
The king and his polemarchos had a falling out the next day, at a fork in the road.
It was a peculiar road, with jumbled boulders and high rock walls. It split into two paths: one ascending toward distant hills, the other descending into a faraway, shaded ravine.
The king halted Rebel, eyeing the ravine.
Captain Lykos turned his steed around and trotted back. “What is it?”
“The Petrakelis Passage is our best shortcut to reach Hellenixia quicker, isn’t it?”
“And the most dangerous,” Captain Lykos pointed out, scowling at the winding road shaded with ancient, gnarled trees with deep furrows towering above it. “You know what could be lurking here.”
“We’ve faced worse. We lost several hours last night. Taking this passage will even it out.”
“Damn it, Theron.” Captain Lykos scrubbed his hand over his face as he nudged his horse nearer to Rebel. “Do you actually want to make it to Anthemos in one piece?”
Calliste rubbed her aching neck. “Why is this route so dangerous?”
“Glad you asked.” Lykos locked eyes with the king. “Petrakelis Passage is a gorge between Mytheora and Hellenixia, notorious for frequent wild harpy attacks. It’s a dangerous route, only suitable for those armed to the teeth or foolish enough to seek glory by killing gods-discarded creatures.”
“And those in a hurry,” the king huffed. “That would be us.”
“Wild harpies?” Calliste asked. “I didn’t know they existed. Other than in the folk tales.”
“They do.” The king merely shrugged. “They’re an illegitimate offspring of the Harpies.”
“Half crazed women, half bloodthirsty birds,” Captain Lykos continued. “They hunt by carrying their victims into the air and dropping them from great heights, then tearing out their guts—”
“We have fought them before, Lykos,” the king growled. “And lost no one.”
The captain nudged his horse closer to Rebel. “When we were hunting them. With spears, and in a far larger company. Now we’re down to swords and shields. I’d like to remind you that wild harpies like feasting on humans—”
“That’s all the more reason to thin their numbers,” the king snapped. “We may not get attacked, but we can’t afford to lose any more time after last night.”
“Listen to me, Theron—”
Bone-chilling, distant screams erupted from far down the gorge.
Drakon straightened up, his eyes narrowing. Kassandros lifted his chin. Chrysantos and Argyros gripped their swords.
“Right,” Captain Lykos spoke slowly. “So the harpies are there, and they’ve just attacked some unfortunate people.”
“Are we going to let them perish?” the king asked in a dangerous tone.
Captain Lykos maneuvered his steed so he was side by side with the king. “Calliste should stay here, with Drakon.”
“No,” the king replied at the same time as Calliste. He shot her a glance over his shoulder. “We might need every warrior down there. You’ll be the safest with me.”
“I’ll be needed for the injured,” she replied. “But what about the horses?”
“All our mounts are battle-trained. We know what we’re doing, Calliste. Just hold on to me.”
“Your maneuvers will be limited with an extra rider,” Captain Lykos hissed at the king.
“I’ll be fine.”
The captain shook his head and looked at Philon. “You brought your bow, didn’t you?”
“ Polemarchos, I may have forgotten one or two tents, but not my bow.”
“Make good use of it. Secure the rear. Aim for the wings first. They’re twice as dangerous when wounded and still flying.” The captain surveyed the group. “Horseback only, for as long as possible. Protective formation around Theron and Calliste. Assess and strike. Destroy their wings first, then kill.”
In a blink, the company formed a tight formation around the king, with Captain Lykos at the front, Kassandros and Drakon flanking Rebel on one side, Chrysantos and Argyros on the other. Philon brought up the rear.
And then they thundered down the shaded road, the air whipping past them.
***
The gorge’s wide entrance loomed ahead. Towering cliffs of weathered white rock rose up, with stunted trees clinging to the walls.
The screams grew louder as they approached. Some of them didn’t sound human.
As they rounded the bend, Calliste stared at the creatures from a fable in a terrifying form: winged, taloned, and screeching.
About a dozen of them swarmed overhead, diving down with their talons outstretched to attack the convoy.
One cart lay overturned on its side, its contents spilled out and partly torn apart. Men armed with swords had formed a protective semi-circle around it.
Calliste’s breath slowed as she spotted an injured woman on the ground behind them. The front of her robe was ripped and bloodied. Beside her, a man was urging a boy to hide inside the cart. At second glance, she recognized them: it was the couple who had chatted with them the previous night before leaving the inn in Mytheora during the storm. “A child,” she raised her voice, hoping the king would hear her. “They’re protecting a child!”
“They’re the easiest to carry away,” he shouted back.
The king’s formation slowed down as the warriors raised their shields and clashed their swords against them. Then they roared.
A shiver ripped down Calliste’s spine.
Their roar paused the harpies’ attack. The creatures flapped their massive brown wings, hovering mid-air to assess the new situation.
Gods. Calliste swallowed as she took in a terrifying fusion of a bird of prey and a woman. Their chests were bare, with feathers starting at their abdomen. Their muscular legs ended in powerful talons that were larger than any bird-of-prey talons she had ever seen.
As they all turned to the king’s company, Calliste gasped.
Their faces were half-human, half-bird, with feathers covering their foreheads and descending around their eyes, giving them a mask-like appearance with curved beaks instead of mouths.
An arrow whizzed overhead, and one harpy screeched, thrashing furiously in the air with an arrow stuck in her wing.
Philon?
And then chaos erupted.
The flock turned on the king’s men and shrieked, beating their powerful wings to shoot up in the sky. For a moment, Calliste thought that they were fleeing, but they quickly regrouped mid-air.
“Steady!” yelled Captain Lykos. “Shields up.”
Calliste drew her knife.
The harpies descended like an avalanche of feathers, talons, and screeches. Just before impact, some of them were knocked off their course, hissing and smashing into their own kind, arrows lodged in their wings.
Calliste whipped her face to Philon, who grinned from far back, already nocking another arrow. That’s why he’s included in the king’s sentinels.
And then the harpies descended in a cloud of furious hisses.
The first harpy smashed into Captain Lykos’ raised shield, her talons rasping against the metal bands before he drove his sword through her outstretched wing. The harpy wailed, thrashing around. In a move quicker than Calliste could track, the captain swung his sword again, and the harpy fell to the ground, her head rolling in the beat-up dust.
Chrysantos and Argyros moved to fight alongside the king in perfect synchrony, their swords swinging with deadly accuracy. On the other flank, Kassandros and Drakon cut through the onslaught of harpies with furious arcs of their blades.
Another harpy jerked back with a screech, a long arrow lodged in her eye.
A couple of men from the ambushed convoy moved forth to help, killing the harpies already thrashing on the ground.
A shadow of a harpy passed above them, then swooped for the king.
His muscles bulged as the creature clashed and clawed against the shield he raised just in time. Even Calliste felt the undeniable impact of a predator striking from air.
Rebel grunted, but held his ground against the creature, who persisted against the king’s shield before she narrowed her eyes at Calliste.
For a frozen moment, the harpy stared, as if surprised by spotting another rider. The plumage covering the upper half of her face seemed like a mask of sleek, tightly-fitted feathers, making her look more like a bird than a human.
Except for her black, human eyes, lit up by a chilling mixture of cunning and pitiless predatory indifference. A short, curved beak protruded where her nose and mouth should be, creating an eerie uncertainty about whether she was human or animal.
It opened.
The inhuman, high-pitched shriek froze blood in Calliste’s veins.
The harpy pushed herself off the king’s shield, flapping her massive wings as she steadied herself in the air, ready to strike at Calliste.
The king never gave her a chance, hacking at the harpy’s arm and slicing through the tendons.
Shrieking, the harpy managed to stay upright and lunged again for the king.
The king smashed his shield into her chest, but she grabbed on to it with her claws and flapped her good wing furiously to stay in the air, her razor-sharp beak opening, getting closer to the king’s face.
He doesn’t have enough room to retreat, Calliste recalled Captain Lykos’ warning. I’m blocking his free movement.
Every movement was suddenly slower, dreamy, as if everything was happening far away.
She gripped her knife tighter. It made a smooth arc in the air before she plunged it into the harpy’s neck, severing the artery crucial for any living being.
The harpy keened, her obsidian eyes widening behind the plumage as she threw her head back in an attempt to dislodge the knife from her neck.
The handle slipped from Calliste’s grasp as the king pushed the creature off his shield.
It flopped onto the ground, thrashing underneath Rebel’s hooves.
And then the noise and clatter ebbed in the deep shadows of the gorge as the dust and swirling feathers settled on the ground.
Captain Lykos swung around, his eyes assessing the situation. He had a gash across his arm, but otherwise seemed unscathed.
Chrysantos and Argyros were shining with sweat. Drakon dismounted quickly to finish off a harpy that still thrashed on the rocky floor. Kassandros rode over to check on Philon, who must have ended up fighting on foot with a harpy or two, and leaned against the wall of the gorge, exhausted.
The tension in the king’s frame eased. He dismounted, checking for the last harpies to kill.
A chill crept up Calliste’s stomach. Her hands were shaking, and it was getting worse.
The king returned to her side, his eyes narrowed and shrewd as he took in her state. “I take it you’ve never killed before.”
Not with a knife. She fixed her eyes on her shaking hands, telling herself it was a cruel creature and a monster. But not entirely an animal, a little voice in her mind whispered.
The king exhaled. “I would have been in far worse condition if you had held back.”
Her stomach churned.
“It might feel strange right now, but it was either her or us. That creature would not have hesitated.”
Calliste nodded.
The king crouched on the carpet of talons and feathers, finding the harpy she had stabbed. He pulled out the knife from her neck, cleaning it methodically against the plumage before returning to her. Taking her hand, he placed the handle of the knife in it and closed her fingers around it. “If this ever happens again, remember to pull back the knife straight away. Never let go of your weapon.”
The knife felt strange in her hand, yet this was the same knife she used to cut herbs and bodies, if needed. To mend them. But now I killed with it.
She blinked at the warmth seeping from his hand wrapped around hers, calming the shaking. He had blood splattered across his face. His breath was still quick from the exertion. Streaks of sweat glistened across his powerful arms and shoulders.
He would always be a blazing centerpiece, always in command. Even now, with her skin still tingling from the dread laced with elation, all she could think about was him tearing off his armor to reveal his magnificent, battle-scarred torso once again.
She wanted to run her hands over the hardness and heat coursing underneath.
To soothe it. Caress it.
Kiss it.
“Calliste.” He spoke her name with that inflection that melted the chill in the pit of her stomach. His fingers tightened around hers. “For a moment, I thought we could have died a messy death at the claws of those monsters.” His eyes burned in his otherwise indecipherable expression. The air between them thickened with something raw and euphoric. And primal. “But look at us. We’re alive.”
Alive. Her abdomen twinged, bursting into heat. She was ready to dismount, take his hand, and find a secluded spot where she could feel his hands everywhere. She wanted it rough, hurried, intense, to drag her nails down his back as he drove himself deep inside her, to burn and feel alive. Gods . She swallowed as his gaze sharpened.
His lips parted, as if he was thinking the exact same thing.
“Erinna!” A scream pierced the air.
The king stepped back, turning his face in the direction of the scream, as if recognizing the desperate note.
She sheathed her blade and jumped off Rebel, rushing to the overturned cart with the king by her side.
Erinna was lying on her back, pressing her hands to her stomach, while Meliton was frantically trying to stop the bleeding.
Calliste dropped to her knees beside her.
“She put herself between the harpy and my brother when they attacked, to save him. Gods. It should have been me,” Meliton said through clenched teeth, his eyes wild. “It happened so fast. Do you know what to do?”
“She’s a healer,” the king replied from behind her. “Let her do her work.”
Erinna stared at her from the ground, her face contorted in pain.
Calliste peeled back the robe on her stomach, staring at the ragged gash. Must have been talons… or a beak. She took a deep breath, focusing, blocking out everything save for the wound in front of her. She could almost hear Leontia guiding her: check the damage. Stop the bleeding. She opened her bag and grabbed the bottle with her herbal disinfectant, pouring it over her hands in a hurry and pushing back against the chill down her spine as the extent of the injuries had become obvious. She’s lost too much blood. Far too much. Gods, is that her stomach…?
“Help her. Please.” Meliton’s expression was twisted with anguish. “She’s only twenty summers old.”
“She will do what she can,” the king answered from what seemed like a great distance.
“It’s… bad… isn’t it?” Erinna coughed. Her voice was strained.
“It’s not that bad, dumpling,” Meliton whispered. “You’ll make it. You have to.”
Calliste stroked Erinna’s forehead, biting her lips at how her complexion seemed to be getting ashen with every frantic breath, and took out the bandage, trying to stem the bleeding.
“I’m… so cold.” Erinna’s breath fluttered, erratic.
Someone else knelt down beside Erinna: Captain Lykos. He took her hand gently. “Erinna? Hold on. Calliste will help you.”
Erinna’s eyes flickered to the captain’s face and her face contorted in a shadow of a smile. “I… saw you… fighting.”
Captain Lykos grinned, but it wasn’t his easy grin. It was dark and desperate, a smile against the doom. “Did you?”
“Y-You were… so brave.” Erinna tried to return the smile through the pain.
“You were the bravest of us all today, Erinna,” the polemarchos said softly, patting her hand. He cast a brief look at her wound. His jaw tightened.
He knows it’s too late.
The dressing was already soaked in blood. There was no point stemming the bleeding because the damage was too extensive to stop or reverse. Her stomach has been ripped open. She’s been bleeding all the time we fought. I can only ease the pain. Her pendant glistened as she tapped into her power, allowing it to seep into Erinna’s body to numb it.
Erinna’s face relaxed.
Captain Lykos threw Calliste’s pendant a careful glance, then squeezed Erinna’s hand. “Better?”
She nodded.
Calliste kept her face neutral, focused on channeling her power, still searching for a solution until a sudden, familiar chill in the air made her look up.
A winged shadow wavered from deep inside the gorge.
For a moment, she thought it was another harpy, but it was the same god she’d been struggling against for years. Their score was uneven, but today, he glided across the dead harpies and debris for his victory.
Thanatos was here to take Erinna’s Shade to the Underworld.
Which meant she couldn’t save this life, and if she’d learned one thing in her practice as a healer, it was that no mortal could dream of contending with the Fates.
Even though her death felt unfair.
Premature.
Needless.
Although Calliste knew when to pick her battles, she suddenly wanted to draw all of her power and release it in a madcap bid to save Erinna. But when she blinked, Thanatos was no longer there, and her power pooled around uselessly—because Erinna didn’t need it anymore.
“Erinna?” Meliton clung to her body. His body shook with sobs. “You can’t! Please, stay with me. Erinna?”
“I’m so sorry,” Calliste whispered before her throat was too tight to let out another word, then rose, shouldering her bag and turning away, blindly making her way to Rebel. She reached the mount and stroked his neck, resting her forehead against it.
In the distance, there was a commotion of Meliton’s sobs, and the men from the convoy talking to the kingsmen who joined in an effort to get the overturned cart upright again.
But even the noise wouldn’t shut out the hateful words that crept into her mind. A disappointment. Good for nothing—
Someone stood behind her. Even through the smell of blood and dust, she could catch the note of warm spices and sea breeze. He was silent, too.
Which was just as well. She didn’t want to talk. She held on to Rebel’s neck.
Eventually, the king came closer, his hand sliding onto his mount’s neck next to hers.
She braced herself for words of comfort she didn’t want to hear.
“What would you like to do, Calliste?” he asked.
“I should check if there are other wounded,” she replied.
“A couple of them have deep gashes.”
“I’ll tend to them,” she said, noticing the dents in his armor where the harpy’s claws had left vicious scratches. Then she met his tired eyes. “Then I can go.”
He nodded.
Numb, she barely registered what she was doing as she sealed the wounds and healed the gashes with the king standing by her side, where he stayed until she’d finished tending to the last of his men.
Alexos, the bulky, grim leader of the convoy, approached her just as she was about to leave and tried to press some silver into her hand, but she shook her head. “It’s not necessary,” she said weakly, exhausted.
Alexos glanced at Meliton, motionless and pale beside Erinna’s form covered with a sheet of linen. “He’ll never heal from this,” he said, his face stony. “And I’ll be cursing the hour when I chose to take this passage until the end of my life. If it wasn’t for you and your friends…” He turned to the king and bowed deeply. “We are forever in your debt.”
“I don’t consider it a debt,” the king retorted.
Alexos paused, scrubbing his hand over his face. “Thank you.”
“Do you have coins for the deceased, Alexos?” Calliste asked.
“Damn. No, I don’t. I should have carried some…” He trailed off as she opened her bag and handed him two from his pouch. “Priestess, these are expensive. I know as much. You must accept silver for it.”
“No need to pay me.”
“Priestess, I insist—”
“She doesn’t want any payment,” the king cut in. “And we must be on our way.” With a final nod to Alexos, he led her away, silent as he helped her onto Rebel.
As they rode out of Petrakelis Passage and headed for Hellenixia, she held on to him, burying her face in his back and choking back the sobs.