“Ladies!” Our heads whipped around to see the prince striding over, crossbow in tow. He wasn’t looking at us, though, his eyes staring upward.
“Oh shit!” I said. The stench hit us, an eye-watering combination of chook poo, rotting meat and ashes and then came the scream. “Tess!” I struggled to shove her out the way as a harpy swooped down at us. The prince yanked her from my grip, pushing her behind him and taking aim just as the bloody thing’s claws stretched outward, ready to tear and rend. The beast jerked mid-air as the arrow ripped through its body, falling to the ground with a dull thump.
“Oh, ho! First blood to me!” the prince said, walking over to the wounded beast and putting another arrow into its skull while it scrabbled to get away. He strolled over with a smirk, then placed his boot on its ribcage and jerked the arrows free. “That shot has buggered the breast on the left side,” he said to Mellors. “We’ll tell Cookie to make mince from it. Now a knife, before the meat begins to sour.” The furries descended on the corpse, well, like a herd of animals.
Unfortunately, there weren’t enough of them to form a complete circle around the cor
pse. She lay in a limp bundle on the ground, her long light-brown hair pooling around her, similar in colour to the feathers that covered her lower bird-like limbs and broad wings. Only her chest and face had bare human-like skin. I watched the men’s sharp-toothed jaws fall open as the prince bent down, grabbing the harpy’s bare breast around the nipple and pulling it far harder than I would want anyone tweaking me. He lay the gleaming knife flat against her ribcage and then began to saw it, a line of red appearing, then a steady trickle of blood as he separated it from the body. I swallowed as he slapped it onto a silver platter, held by one of the servants for just this purpose, the disembodied breast wobbling slightly on the surface, the red fingerprints on the otherwise spotless skin the only hint of what had happened. Tess and I took steps back as one.
“It’s OK, never show fear in front of a carnivore,” Knox whispered in my ear, hands on my shoulders, stopping me from fleeing further. “You look like you’re the weak one here, you’ll be next.”
“We’ll have quite the feast tonight,” the prince said, flicking the nipple of one of the two breasts now removed, watching them with a hungry eye as they were walked over to a box of ice that was being pulled from a cart, to keep the meat cool. I fought down a wave of nausea, my stomach jerking as they passed. I watched the prince smooth the predatory grin from his face with an effort; his cheeks flushed red, his eyes glittering before he plastered a look of concern on it. “My lady Pendragon, I do hope you are well. They are such dastardly beasts; I’m afraid I am going to have to insist you stay at my side at all times today.”
Tess’s face had gone completely white and she only nodded dumbly when his expectant gaze had settled on her for some time. “Of course, Your Highness and thank you for saving me.” He shot me a look then, eyebrow cocked and I was forced to smile and give him a thumbs up.
“Good, good, string him along,” Knox said, then strolled over to where the weapons were being distributed. The furries frowned when he picked one up, looking down the bow with one eye closed, then inspecting an arrow. It was interesting to watch; I could see them wanting to refuse to give him one, their nervous, yellow eyes flicking to the prince and Mellors. He ignored them and came back, passing a long bow to Flea and then shouldering a quiver of arrows, giving me a tight smile. “Let’s go kill some harpies.”
“But first a toast, sire?” Mellors said, bringing over a tall bottle of liquor wrapped in a plaid cloth. A servant rushed over with a brace of glasses, placing one in the prince’s hand, then the officers’. The prince frowned and took one from the servant, the dun-coloured furry jerking back in fright, almost dropping his burden. The prince’s lips peeled back in a snarl, before smoothing abruptly into a smile as he bestowed the glass on Tess. We were served last, Mellors pouring the remaining drops into my glass, giving the bottle a shake with a smirk before handing it to a server to whisk away.
“To the hunt!” the prince said, holding up his glass.
“To the strength of your arm, may your aim always be true,” Mellors said, clinking his glass against his liege’s. He watched his prince drink down the golden fluid, only taking a drink himself when the prince looked up, having swallowed a mouthful.
“There something going on there?” Knox whispered as an aside to me.
“Not sure, but if it is, it's unrequited. Look,” I hissed back as the prince turned to my sister, smiling down her over the rim of his glass.
After the toast was completed and the glasses were collected, I watched dumbly as great big hand drums were pulled from the equipment cart, some of the more slightly built officers going first, holding the drums in one paw and the wooden beaters loosely in the other. “We’ll take the lead, as the more experienced hunters,” Mellors said, looking over to where the prince steered my sister to certain smelly doom, arm wrapped around her shoulders. “Do try to keep up.”
I watched the wolf-man return to his master, eyes slitted. “So, what’s the plan, Knox?”
“Play along, wait until their bloods up, then take 'em out as fast as I can while they’re distracted. Their eyes are on the birds; ours are on them. I’ll focus on His Majesty, then the smart one with the black and white fur. Everyone else is just collateral damage.”
37
As we closed on the harpy nest, I wondered what was the point of the drums? The bird women, who appeared to have created a colony in an old dead tree, jerked up into the air the moment they sighted us, forming a foul-smelling cloud in the sky above us. I watched some flinch with each sound of the drum, but it didn’t bring them any closer. “You need to keep your weapons trained on the beasts,” the prince said, turning to look at us and frowning when he saw Knox had an arrow nocked but aimed downwards. “They could strike at any time.”
“We’ll be ready,” Knox said with a slow shrug.
“And I’ll take any damage to the Lady McKinnon out of your lazy hide. As her man, her safety is your responsibility.” Maybe there is something to Tess’s choice, I thought as I watched the two stare each other down. I could see the rise in irritation in the prince, his brows drawing down hard as if that was enough to turn away the gaze of the more impassive Knox. Finally, the prince looked to me, muttering “Be on your guard,” before turning back to Tess.
We didn’t take his advice; instead we watched them, watched him take my sister, her arm tucked in his, into a flock of dangerous animals. The drummers fanned out to form a loose circle, far from the massive dead tree that had been converted into the harpy colony nest, the prince and his men taking up position behind them. Mellors, as always, shadowed the prince, bow partially drawn, legs slightly bent as he stalked forward, eyes wheeling as he looked for possible threats and targets. “Watch them,” Knox said as the furries picked up the pace, the sounds of the drums coming louder and faster. The harpies flew in tighter and tighter circles, screaming their incoherent abuse at the hunters, some even sending down a barrage of foul-smelling liquid shit. “Wait for it, wait for it . . .” The boys nocked arrows as one, as did the furry officers. I started to cough, the rank ammonia stink growing thicker and thicker the closer we got. My eyes began to water, the swooping harpies becoming little more than black blurs. “Now.” Knox’s voice was half hiss, half purr. The furries stopped, my sister was thrust behind the prince, she stumbling in her long skirts as he raised his bow, lips kissing the string, before letting his arrow fly. This was all the others needed, their arrows following his in a hail storm.
The thing I noticed most was the screaming. Some because they fell to the earth like stones, some because when they did so they weren’t dead, just injured and others because they were done hovering. We’d just declared war. Knox’s bow jerked up. “Six o’clock,” he barked at Flea and both let fly. Their wings were held close to their bodies as they swooped, hoping to take us out with their outstretched claws, but it put them in a vulnerable position. The faces, so close to a human’s it was frightening, were distorted in a venomous mask of anger, carnivore’s fangs gleaming in open mouths that softened into O’s when the arrows found their way home.
One was hit right in the heart, dropping limply a moment later, but the other, the arrow had gone slightly wide, hitting the joint of the animal’s shoulder. It fell badly to the ground; its wings a mass of wildly flapping feathers as it struggled to right itself. It screamed, its anger, its pain, before getting to its feet, one wing trailing uselessly at its side before snarling and then charging towards us. “Oh, fuck!” I said, backing up quickly, but Knox slid in front of me in one smooth movement, bow at the ready and waiting for the animal to clamber into close range–howling what it intended to do to us when it got us in its claws–before releasing the arrow, this time smashing into its heart, stopping it mid-stride.
“Well done!” the prince said, eyeing Knox thoughtfully. “Morrow, Jakers, butcher the corpse for me, will you and promptly? Mellors, we should have bought more field dressers. Half the meat is going off before they have a chance to slice it from the carcasses. I promised Cookie
there would be enough for everyone.” The drummers had stopped their bloody beating and with that, the harpies had settled back down in their roost. They screamed and postured but otherwise seemed disinclined to attack. Instead, they watched the bodies of their sisters get turned into meat.
Mellors drew closer, flicking an eye at the corpse and nodding to a bloody-fronted furry who came close, knife in hand. He chewed thoughtfully on what looked like a small red lolly, taken from a pile in his hand. “You’re right, of course, sire. I’ll have half of the men swap to butchering. There’s not really enough harpies for everyone to have a shot as it is. Would be good for some of the men to remember what it’s like to be on the business end of a knife. Now, I brought you some of your favourite delicacies . . .” He held his paw out, the violently red balls rolling across the rough surface.
“Nipples! Oh, I do love those!” My eyes went wide as he grabbed what was apparently small morsels of harpy flesh, popping it into his mouth raw and chewing on it with great gusto. “So lovely when they are fresh. That contrast between chewy flesh and smooth skin is just delightful. I would badger my father, the king, for a taste every time we went out shooting. Damned near made myself sick on them as a young fellow. I ate and ate and ate them, not paying my nanny any mind, until I cut some off myself from one of the discarded carcasses. Went quite green after that, the bile in its flesh having spread. Nanny was whipped at the post for that oversight.”
“I believe she was executed, sire,” Mellors said.
I breathed carefully in through my nose, only opening my mouth enough to let a whistle of air through. I was afraid if I did anything more, I’d be puking in the grass. The ground was awash with blood, jelly-like slabs of meat slashed from body after body, the corpses tossed onto a pile as close to the nest as they dared. The harpies were not pretty creatures by any stretch of the imagination, but I wondered as I watched the prince devour nipple after nipple from the animals' bodies, did they deserve this?