Piers Anthony - Unicorn Point

“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 re mained, 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 9 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 har pies. 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. Pre vention 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 man form 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 de scend 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, peer ing 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 salt water 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 forte, 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 tri fles, 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 contin ued. “But this be no easy thing.”