Chapter 3: A Hellion of Harpies

          “Naida! Wake up!” Phanes, the olive-farmer shook her awake.  “Scaliana! Zenia!” He threw another log onto the coals of the fire, sending sparks flaring up.  “It’s close to dawn!  Get up before they shit on our heads!”

            Naida scrambled up, one arm around Aggie, Phanes’ dog.  The harpies had come out of the dawn days ago and stripped a dozen olive trees of fruit, ruining what they couldn’t eat, throwing the fruit down onto the ground and shitting on it.  Afaris hadn’t had a hellion harpy flock attack in the past six years.

            Last time the flock had been fifty strong and they’d ruined half the wheat crop and broken the branches of most of the olives.  Everyone in Afaris had gotten sick too, since they fouled everywhere they flew, shitting as they pleased, in the water.  Yalenda’s younger siblings, Izzie and ‘Thena, had both died of harpy sicknesses.  Sometimes it hit you in the lungs, sometimes the skin.  Doris still had harpy pock marks on one cheek.  Sometimes you caught something that just made you bleed to death.  Hellion harpies were cesspools of illness and destroyed food bringing famine along with illness.

            Luckily they also only flew by daylight, so people could set up traps in the night, waiting for them to show up at dawn. Naida cuddled Aggie quickly and got up, feeling for her sling.  It had worked around the back of her belt and she pulled it out and set her best sling-stone in it.  If she could spot the queen… the one wearing any stolen precious metal and hit her, that would disperse the flock for a time.  Not that people had much gold or silver, even copper.  But harpies were like magpies that way about metal and you could lure one away from food with the glint of it.

            In the fire light, and the Belt light, Naida could just see the trap.  It was a blanket laid out in the open in front of the ruined olive trees with Yalenda’s betrothal necklace and Naida’s bracelet along with Zeno’s priestess collar.  It should draw the little monsters like flies.  With her other hand she checked her club.  It wasn’t good to get too close but the harpies were small and hard to hit with arrows, even after they got tangled in the net.

            The harpies had this trilling shriek that grated like stone on stone and their stiff flight feathers clattered so you could hear them coming.  They also stank. Not many things under the Belt would eat a flocking harpy. Naida swallowed her gruel quickly as the sky got lighter and lighter.  It was hard waking up, but she could always nap up on the hill with the goats after, if she took Aggie up with her.

            The sun had barely cleared the sea when they came clattering across the water. Uri the tanner had just been getting up to check and see that the bait was firmly attached to the blanket and crouched down fast.  Naida held her breath.

            There were a lot more than fifty it looked like as they swirled like black smoke over the sea.  Last time Afaris had lost all their sheep to the murrain and getting blinded by the queen and her bucks.  It was hard to stay quiet as the wind shifted and blew their stench over everybody.  Zenia coughed but managed to muffle it with her shawl as the stinking hellion circled over the precious olive trees.

            Will they settle? Will they go for the trap? Is the queen young and stupid and greedy for shinies? Or old and canny and weighed down with gold?

            It seemed like it was a new hellion mixed young and old.  The older bucks stayed high and circled cautiously until a screech ordered them down with the young ones who were already landing and stalking in circles around the blanket, spreading their wing/hands to poke and tap the edges.  Not yet.  Goddess let everyone hold their fire till they’re all down. Don’t let them steal my bracelet.

            A soft owl hoot sounded as if the bird were settling down for the day.  That was Oios, warning everyone to stay put. The hellion shrieked and clacked and a covy of quail broke, trying to get away. They managed a few whistling wingbeats before the bucks swarmed them and tore them to bloody shreds in the air. Other harpies caught a few bloody flecks in the air, licked their handwings.  One hapless bird was carried up to the queen who devoured it in a dozen bites.

            They circled the blanket again and again the younger ones landed first.  Another owl hoot.  Then the queen herself landed, her dirty feathers the colour of tarnished copper. Naida just had time to see that she’d strung some gold rings on a copper chain as a crown before the archers stood up and fired into the air over the hellion.

            The arrows glinted white, trailing gossamer thin bird netting, spreading out over the flock whose first reaction was to crouch.  There’s something wrong! It’s not spreading right!

            It was only half spread, one archer had not fired and Pero ran out of the brush pulling his pants up. The flock launched itself for the sky, half of them aiming for the gap as he seized his arrow and sent his billow of netting over them, but it was too late.

            The queen flung herself into the open air as Naida whirled her sling, hit her squarely under her wing/hands with a puff of copper fluff, Deno’s flung rock hitting her from the other side. She tumbled into the nets and got caught up even in the tangled gossamer.  Oios and Deno and Naida were closest and sprang to smash her flat with their clubs.  People were yelling in horror as they killed the harpies trying to bite or claw them. Then it was just dirty squishing noises and getting splashed with goo as they flattened every harpy they could reach.  The vermin broke like balsa wood boxes filled with pudding, crackling, their screeching finally cutting off, leaving only the odd whine.  Among the villagers the older people didn’t react while the near-adults helping their elders cried, or whimpered as they worked. “Less noise, children, kill them quickly,” Oios said calmly, his old arms spattered to the elbows.

            The Afares stood, panting, looking up at the handful of surviving hellion disappearing over the sea as fast as they could fly.  A half-flattened harpy, tangled in the middle of the mess, squawked, flapped, and died.  Everyone was splashed with brown harpy blood.

            Phanes and Deno shook themselves out of the killing funk and Doris and the other women who had stayed in the farmhouse with the babies came out with jars of hot water.  “Oldest and youngest scrub yourselves first.”

            Zeno began handing out the lumps of harsh lye soap that Irikraska made.  “If you’re waiting for hot water, harvest the feathers and lay them on these baskets.  We’ll wash them.”

            Naida sat down and shivered even though it was already a hot morning.  “Look, girl.” Deno held out the harpy queen’s crown, sliding the gold rings off the chain.  “You took her out first.”  He held out the copper chain dripping soap and water.  “I say it’s your prize.”

            “Thank you, papa Deno,” she said.  “I’m still mucky.”

            He laughed and slung it over her head.  “It’ll wash.”  He turned to where Pero was standing with the other archers.  “And where were you when everyone was to work together?”

            Pero glanced at Yalenda who was scrubbing her hair and not looking at anybody.  “I… ah… had to go.”

            Deno shook his head.  “You’re filthy enough.  Go harvest feathers.  You get to wash last, big strong boy that you are.  Nearly a man.  Shouldn’t play silly shit like this.” Kosmosr stamped out of the group of archers and fetched his stick across Pero’s shoulders, once, twice.

            “You blasted young fool!  Couldn’t hold it another instant! If the queen had gotten away, we’d have been fighting them all summer!  They LEARN.  You can never catch them the same way twice and we’d be sick before the end of next moon!” Pero shook himself like Aggie trying to shake her coat dry and slouched off to the filthy job, eyes on the ground.

Scaliana sniggered as if she knew a secret and Yalenda flung her used water on her.  “Shut up!” she hissed.

            “Naida! Hot water!” She turned her back on the girls, 

poured handfuls of it over herself, scrubbing at the mess, the copper chain warm against her collar bones, but she could feel when Yalenda straightened up and glared at her back, as if it were somehow her fault that Pero was in trouble.