The mud sucked at Oliver's boots as he sprinted up the road, glancing back, expecting to see one of the birds descending on him at any moment.

He passed the horses attached to his wagon and then caught up with the wagon in front of his – it too held wooden boxes – in a matter of heartbeats.

The wounded in the next cart up were scrambling to get clear, the more mobile having to picking their way over others who were slower to rouse. There were perhaps a dozen people still remaining. Too many.

He heard galloping approaching quickly from the rear, and then two horsemen from behind passed him by, long spears held out high above their heads, the horses sending great clods of mud flying from their feet.

Up in the sky ahead he watched as several of the harpies abruptly descended, their lazy spirals becoming steep dives, something trailing behind their heads...

As they fell from the sky he realized why the shapes of their heads were wrong. These were no mere birds; in the place of hooked beaks and black eyes were human faces, female faces, long dark hair streaming in the wind behind them as they fell.

It was then he heard a sound that would remain with him for the rest of his life, a sound that he would later recall as his true initiation into the horrors this world held.

Hawks and other hunting birds, just before they are about to strike, make a cry so loud and piercing that it startles their prey, giving them the advantage in the crucial moment. It is from this cry that they take their name.

The sound Oliver now heard was the high shriek of a woman, voice lifted high in terror or agony. It was a mockery of the human voice which bore no intelligence, only a singular predatory intent. It was the sound of a man-hunter on the wing.

He shivered even as he ran, stumbled, a ripple of fear running through him like liquid ice through his veins – the trees – beneath the wagon –

He had never truly considered the horror of the mouse as it fled for shelter, knowing its death was upon it, yet not from which quarter it came nor where to run.

But he was no mouse. As around him people froze, he felt a surge of anger rise within him, challenging the fear, and he forced his legs on regardless. How dare these sub-human monsters prey upon people?

What happened next was chaotic, broken up action, a series of tableaus flash-frozen before his eyes.

A shadow passed over him. With a rushing sound a harpy pulled out of a steep killing dive just before him, descending on the wagon with the wounded. A rank smell trailed behind it, so harsh as to draw Oliver's attention even in the horror of the moment.

Then the bird was pulling up, its back to him, wings as wide as the road pumping powerfully and sending gusts of foul air out.

He heard a twanging sound, saw something flit by in his peripheral vision, but the bird was already lifting off from the ground, one of its huge feet clutching a man's head, a talon through his neck. He dangled bonelessly from its grasp.

Other cries rang out, a cacophony of new hunting screams pressing down upon him like a chorus of the damned, echoing through the road.

The ascension of the harpy before him revealed that all down the road there were others descending on the caravan, some of greater or lesser wingspan but none smaller than thirty or forty feet in width.

He heard a rushing wind at his back and instinctively threw himself for the side of the road. He was knocked to the side by the descent of another of the great birds, talons grasping at the air fruitlessly where he'd been standing.

There was a thrumming sound he felt in his teeth as much as heard, a white light that lit up the road even in the bright of day. He didn't see the source, was scrambling up the rise at the side of the road, scrabbling through pine needles to pull himself to shelter.

He heard another rush of wings behind him, tensed in anticipation – then a bolt of white light lit up his fading vision, the source coming from the trees. It left an afterimage in his eyes like a laser with pulsing, variated rings down its length.

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He glanced back, saw Timaeus lowering his hand and waving him on from the other side of the road. He pulled himself up into the safety of the trees, stood, began jogging through them towards the wagon.

Up and down the road the great, black winged beasts were dive bombing the unfortunate souls caught in the open. Another descended on the wagon he was moving towards.

One of the armored soldiers had reached it first, leapt down from his horse with shield held high and long spear up.

The wounded were clambering out of the cart one at a time, many hampered by their injuries, making for the sides of the road as Oliver jogged through the trees on the side of the road towards it, keeping the soldier in his peripheral vision.

Then the bird reached them. The soldier threw himself to the side as the bird stretched out its claws towards him, rolling to the side with an agility that didn't fit the heavy armor he wore, thrusting with his spear as he rolled to his feet.

The spear caught the bird in the side of one wing, near the base, and sent it crashing to the ground past him with a shriek of agony. It thrashed about where it had fallen, one of its wings catching the soldier hard from behind and knocking him to the ground.

Far ahead, up the road, another sight caught Oliver's attention. One of the soldiers had sprouted glowing, golden hawk's wings from his back, and was propelling himself rapidly into the air. His wings were at least equal in width to that of the harpies', if not a little larger.

Oliver stared. Magic.

He heard/felt that thrumming sound again, saw another pulse of white light, realized that on the sides of the road where the rest of the soldiers were hidden they had begun sniping at the birds with magic. He felt a brief surge of vindication – he'd *known* the soldiers had some means of ranged attack.

Then Oliver reached the wagon with the wounded, saw that two still remained in it. One, a woman, was dragging herself by her hands out of the cart, legs unmoving, and the other, a man, stared sightlessly at the sky, dangling motionless on his back over the side of the wagon.

The soldier had picked himself up and was trying to spear the human-bird again, circling its thrashing claws cautiously.

There was nobody to help the woman.

He looked up – none of the birds circling above seemed to be looking at the wagon. Many of them were being drawn towards the commotion up the road, where the winged soldier was now throwing those white beams from his hands as he propelled himself nimbly through the air.

As Oliver watched, he flipped to one side, simultaneously evading the attacks of half a dozen harpies, and knocked one out of the air with a double blast of white light to the face.

Other white beams lanced up into the sky from the trees up and down the road, and a column of flame looking like a flamethrower billowed forth towards another downed bird.

Oliver wanted to stay in watch for the sheer wonder of the sight, but instead he scrambled down the side of the bank and back into the road.

Now was his chance.

In a matter of two or three seconds he'd reached the cart, chanced a glance up – the sky was still clear above him. The woman had reached the edge of the cart, dragging herself along the edge by her arms, legs trailing limply behind, her face a rictus of determination and fear.

The look of hope and disbelief on her face as he reached her justified his decision.

He seized her under the shoulders and heaved her bodily down into the mud. She was heavier than she looked. Then he set about pushing her under the wagon. He didn't like his chances of helping her up to the trees when she couldn't walk at all.

He helped her crawl under, half-shoved, half-rolled her until she was, if not completely covered, then just enough to make a snatch and grab impossible.

He chanced a glance up as he finished, saw another of the birds descending on him silently, broad wings snapping open to nearly the width of the road as it airbraked from a near-vertical dive above him.

Instinctively he threw himself to the side – not far enough – it seized him about the waist – pain where one of the talons pierced his shoulder –

Then his head snapped back from the abrupt change in momentum and the ground was falling away. In seconds they were ten, twenty, thirty feet off the ground, climbing fast.

He dangled helplessly from the harpy's talons as they ascended, his skewered shoulder sending waves of agony through him and wrenching a scream out of him.

He reached up reflexively, clutching the gray-skinned, scabrous leg he was suspended from with his good hand, trying to lift himself off the tenterhook of a talon he was suspended from.

It didn't work.

Every movement – the pump of its wings, readjustment of its legs, angling of its body – as it flew sent new pain radiating out from his shoulder, a constant up-and-down tear of pain so bad his vision began to fade and nausea rose. It combined with the stench of the bird until the only reason he didn't throw up was because he hurt too much.

He could _feel_ the talon grating against bone. The only other time he'd been hurt this badly he'd ended up in the hospital for a week with a massive infection.

The monstrous face of his captor danced before his mind's eye, the all-too-human features and the blank brown eyes that stared dumbly, like the eyes of a corpse, nothing behind them save a keen predator's need.

He knew he was already beyond aid. Even if he somehow freed himself from the clutches of the bird, he would only fall to his death.

He could do nothing but watch as they ascended higher and higher, and in this moment he felt despair.

When they hit the clouds, he was soaked to the bone in seconds. He hardly noticed. The all-consuming pain in his shoulder swallowed up nearly all conscious thought, and somewhere in the back of his mind that wasn't screaming, fear and shame vied for supremacy.

Had he traded his life for that woman's? Had it been worth it? How could he have been so foolish?

He felt his consciousness slipping. His mind began to wander, drifting to another time. Another war. Another mistake.