Hero for Hire by C. B. Pratt Page B

no closer to my hands. First, I had to get out of this. If the harpy cried again, I would have to be ready to act.
    Naturally, now that it would be useful, the harpy went silent. But as everything else was also hushed, the snake and I soon heard another sound, small and muffled. It was the sound of weeping, muffled as though someone were trying desperately to stifle the rattling sobs, but still audible to a man and a creature with nerves on the stretch.
    “Boy,” the snake said, voice dripping with the venom of contempt. The sobbing stopped but through fear, not comfort. “Boy, is that you? Weeping like a woman...I expected nothing better of you.”
    A few stalks of wheat shivered. I could imagine the whiny boy crouched down there, hoping against discovery, knowing it was too late. Perhaps he was praying for the kindly earth to open and swallow him up, a far better fate than Yanni’s.
    Still the snake didn’t take its eyes off me. “Come out, boy, come out, come out wherever you are.”
    The voice had less of a hiss in it, sounding more like the human being it had pretended to be. “Poor little boy wanted to be a man and all you really are is meat, just cold meat. At least I appreciate you for that!”
    The rock that bounced off its head did not come from the wheat field. Nor did it come from the hand of a coward.
    The girl stood astride the road, her hair unbound, her eyes bright with clean tears. They didn’t impede her aim. She swung a second stone in the sling she'd improvised from her head-cloth. “What are you waiting for?” she shouted.
    The snake reared back, ready to spit at her.
    I woke up from my own astonishment. Dropping the useless sword, I reached behind my head and pulled my own. All the energy pent up in my body let loose as I jumped forward with a yell that rivaled the harpy’s in volume. I sank my sword deep into the creature’s neck, at the angle of the jaw.
    It hissed and twisted, sucking down its own venom deep into its throat. It tried to bite me but if there’s one place you cannot bite it is under your own lower jaw. It reared up, up and up, almost the entire length of the body, then fell backward, thrashing as violently as the snake that had nearly bitten Temas.
    Only this time I was riding athwart the ridged muscle of the body. Where does a snake’s neck end and the body begin?  My sword cut a jagged line through the white skin and spurting flesh as the creature twisted and writhed.
    It heaved over onto its belly and began beating its head on the earth, trying to kill me with its own death throes. Dazed, I leapt off but not so dazed that I stood where it could still spit its hatred at me with its dying breath. I whirled my sword up and over, cleaving the head off in a blow so hard it went right through to the ground.
    The eyes glazed over, the white membrane falling over the half-human pupils. My sword was smoking; I shoved it under the dirt of the road.
    I sank to one knee as the girl came closer. I wish I could claim it was in homage but the truth is that the snake had been right. I was exhausted. But I had three more men to fight, four if you counted Eurytos himself. The Fates alone knew what vile abominations Eurytos’ remaining little friends would prove to be. What other creatures had he found on his travels, converted like the snake into some new thing neither honestly animal nor entirely human? A wolf, a bear, a boar?
    The girl produced a wineskin full of well-watered wine. I could have drained it in a breath but remembered in time that someone else had been out in the heat as well. After she’d drunk, I said, “That was a well-thrown stone.”
    “When I was a little girl, they set me in the fields to keep off the crows. I had nothing else to do but practice rock-throwing. Then when my brothers were born, I had to learn to weave instead.”
    “If you throw a shuttle as skillfully as you throw a rock, you must weave better than the spiders. You saved my life.”
    “I