Chapter 343 - 334 — Snatchers in the Pass II

Chapter 343: Chapter 334 — Snatchers in the Pass II

Maeve was already inside.

She had been at the horses’ heads and she went up over the front board and into the cover in about a second and a half, and she got both arms around Halden’s chest from behind and locked her hands and put her heels against the frame.

"*I’VE GOT HIM* — Ronan, ROOF—"

Ronan got round the side of the wagon and put the shield edge up into the thing’s ribs and it did not let go.

It beat its wings.

That was the moment. James saw it from eleven metres away with absolute clarity — the wings came down twice, hard, in an enclosed space, and the canvas and the hoops and the whole top of the wagon lifted, and a fifty-year-old man in a bandage came six inches up off the boards with a woman’s arms locked around his chest and her heels braced and losing.

He was not going to get there.

Eleven metres, a Harpy in his face, and a man being taken out through the roof of a wagon.

`[GRAVE STEP — 120 MANA]`

`[MANA: 1,850 / 3,100]`

---

The anchor was the skeleton on the roof.

The world went out and came back on top of the wagon with his boots on a hoop and everything at the wrong angle — the lurch, the second, the floor of the world insisting it was somewhere else. He could not see properly and his weight was going forward and he had about one useful decision available.

He did not cast.

Necro Blast at that range, with Halden’s chest four inches from the thing’s talons and Maeve’s arms around him, was not a thing James was ever going to do.

He got Durendal up in both hands, half blind, and put it into the Harpy from above.

It went in behind the wing joint and through, and the thing shrieked — properly shrieked, the first noise any of them had made, a raw human scream out of a woman’s face — and let go.

Halden came down onto the boards with Maeve underneath him.

Ronan got a hand in, and the two of them hauled him back through the hole and down into the bed of the wagon.

James rode the Harpy off the roof and put the sword through it again on the road.

`[HARPY SLAIN]`

`[CALL OF SOULS ACTIVATED — MANA RESTORED: +30]`

---

"*Halden.*"

Maeve had him flat in the bed with his shirt up before the wagon had gone another ten metres.

The bandage had gone. Not loosened — gone, torn off with the shirt front when the thing had a grip on him, and what was under it was a great deal worse than it had been at the station.

"It’s open. It’s properly open, that’s—" She had both hands on him. "James, he’s losing it fast. I can slow it. I cannot fix it."

"How long?"

"Not two hours. Not *one* hour." She did not look up. "He needs to be inside a building with somebody who does this for a living, and he needs it soon."

Halden’s eyes were open and he was still holding the satchel with one hand and had never once let go of it.

`[TIME REMAINING: 0:05:55]`

`[DISTANCE REMAINING: 0.85 KM]`

---

That was when the big one came out.

It came out onto the highest ledge on the eastern wall, forty metres up, where the cliff overhung — and everything above the road went quiet.

Not the wind. Not the wheels. The Harpies.

Eleven of them stopped calling at the same moment.

It was the same creature as the others and it was not the same size. The wings went out and kept going out, half again as wide as anything else in that pass, heavier through the shoulder, with the primaries thick enough to see individually from the road. The talons on it were the length of Finn’s hand. The face was the same starved woman’s face and it was not thin — it was the only one of them that looked *fed*.

`[ELITE HOSTILE DETECTED]`

`[AELLO — HARPY]`

`[LEVEL: 57]`

`[HP: 21,000 / 21,000]`

"That," said Halden, from the floor of the wagon, "is why there’s no bodies."

---

It did not circle. It did not call. It did not do one single thing that gave anybody time.

It came off the overhang and dropped forty metres in a straight line with its wings folded, opened them about eight metres up, and went for the hole in the roof.

Cillian got a shot away and it was nowhere near.

Ronan got the shield into the space above the tear and took the whole impact, and it moved him — a Guardian who had held a manticore’s charge went back half a metre and had to catch himself on the frame of the wagon.

Finn hit it on the way through and opened the trailing edge of one wing.

`[AELLO — HP: 21,000 → 19,600]`

It was already twenty metres up.

"*It’s faster than the—*"

"I know," said James.

---

He watched it turn at the top of the climb and understood the thing that mattered.

It was not a flying enemy. Not really. Nothing that flew could be beaten by five people on a road and everybody in that pass knew it.

But it wanted the man in the wagon. And to get the man in the wagon it had to come down, all the way down, into a space four metres above a wooden roof — every single time, without exception.

They could not catch it in the air.

They could decide where it landed.

"Cillian. Hold."

"I am holding—"

"Hold for the big one and nothing else. I don’t care what dives. Maeve—"

"Brand’s ready."

"Finn, off the damaged side. Get away from the hole."

"Away from—"

"*Away from it.*"

---

James took the wing-framed skeleton off the roof.

It climbed down the far side of the wagon and he positioned it at the front nearside corner, which put nothing at all on the eastern side of the tear except a shield, a horse skeleton and the shadow of the cliff.

Ronan stayed exactly where he was, between the hole and the courier, and did not look up.

Finn drifted four metres wide of the wagon and stood in the open like a man who had lost interest.

And the road kept going, and the wheel kept knocking, and above them Aello came round the top of its turn and looked down at a wagon with a hole in the roof and one less thing standing over it.

It came.