Prey

by Mary Crawford

Iolaus kept his eyes tightly closed for most of the way, but when the griffin began to circle upwards in an ever tighter spiral, he had to look.

Just look up, he told himself. Whatever you do, don't look down.

Up was bad enough. Jagged mountain ridges rose in front of him, spikes of crystal glittering here and there in the light of the setting sun. The wind rushed past his ears, and the griffin's wingbeats grew even more powerful as it climbed, shaking him in its grip.

Even if the griffin didn't drop him and crack his skull open like a turtle's shell, Iolaus didn't see that he had many options except hang on. There was nothing but bare rock in front of him, and a rocky valley far below him. He had dropped his sword to bind up Hercules' shoulder, just before the second griffin dove down from high above and sank its claws into Iolaus' sides. They hadn't know there was another one, but it figured. It was just one of those days. I bet Herc is really, really pissed off by now. The thought cheered him up a bit.

The griffin had altered course, angling into a deep crack in the rock just broad enough for it to pass. A wingtip brushed the steep wall and the griffin juddered away, reflexively tightening its grip on him. Its claws dug into his sides like the teeth of a harrow, and Iolaus gritted his teeth.

The griffin slowed down as they went deeper. It was hard to see in the half-light, but there was something up ahead, blocking the chasm. It looked like a stack of driftwood in a dry streambed, but they were well above the treeline.

The griffin spread its wings, bracing itself to land, and Iolaus sighed. Of course. It's a nest. Now my day is really fucking complete.

Fire lanced through his sides, the pressure of the claws vanished, and his vision greyed out as he tumbled head over heels into the nest.

Iolaus felt cold, and he hurt, and something was nudging his shoulder but he really didn't want to wake up. Besides, he was pretty sure it was still dark. "I'm sleeping in today, Herc," he muttered, but the nudging only became more insistent. Then something sharp dug into his neck, and something else tugged at his hair, and it didn't feel like fingers.

He sat up abruptly, and immediately regretted it as the pain in his sides flared into life. He was sitting on a bed of down. All around him, six, no, seven small mottled griffins squawked and flapped their stubby wings, apparently panicked by his movement. The big one was gone, though, Iolaus saw to his relief, and the chicks didn't seem inclined to attack him immediately. He had to get out of the nest and find shelter somewhere before it came back. If he could manage to move that far. He looked up past the high woven walls of the nest to the narrow slice of sky above and saw stars. At least it was a clear night.

Iolaus shrugged out of his vest, moving slowly and carefully. As he did so, one of the chicks squawked at him and poked its beak into his belly. He took a deep breath, grabbed it gently by the head and moved it away. To his surprise, the griffin let him do it without more than a squawk of protest. Maybe griffins only became belligerent when they had grown up enough to hunt their own prey, or maybe he smelled like a griffin, after being pressed so close against one. These half-grown creatures were treating him almost like a nestmate.

Another griffin was trying to tear his leather bag open, making excited gobbling noises. "Hey, stop that!" He whisked it out from under the startled chick and opened it himself. Good, he still had some bandages left, and enough food and water to last for a day or two while Hercules found a way to get up this far, or he found a way to get down.

The ragged holes in his left and right side had stopped bleeding, and it didn't feel as though the griffin's claws had dug into anything vital. Unless you considered muscle and flesh to be vital, which Iolaus admittedly did. Grunting with effort, he managed to tie a few strips of bandage tightly around himself without passing out in the process. I need to eat something. But if I don't get out of here first, I'll end up on the menu.

The walls of the nest rose higher than his head, branches and bits of cloth and more than a few bones woven into each other like a thorn hedge. He grabbed the highest branch he could reach and hung from it to test his weight, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in his sides from the stretch. One of the griffins jumped onto the top of his boot, apparently thinking it was a game, and he fell.

"Ow. Ow, ow. Stop that!" He swatted the griffin away, and it snapped its beak at him reproachfully, its tail lashing from side to side like a cat's. Well, a lion's, but these chicks didn't look much like a proud mixture of eagle and lion, not yet. They were ugly mottled creatures, their huge goggling eyes protruding from a pink featherless skull, their wings not yet big enough to carry their long feline bodies. The one who had jumped on him was a bit bigger and darker than the others, and its neck was mottled more. Different strain, probably.

He got up, sweeping his arms in circles to keep the griffins at a distance, and tried again. This time he managed to hoist himself onto the edge of the nest, and looked down.

It was hard to see in the faint starlight, but the chasm below the nest looked to be narrowing ever further, and he couldn't see any bottom. Just to settle that to his own satisfaction, he broke off a gnarled, heavy root from the side of the nest and let it drop.

It knocked against the sides of the chasm for a while, and eventually rattled to a stop. After forty heartbeats, to be precise. Too many. Jumping down into that would be suicide. Though, in daylight, it might be possible to climb the chasm like a horizontal chimney, wedging his arms and legs against the canyon walls. Yeah, if I don't get eaten first.

He dropped back into the nest, scattering the griffins again. There was nothing he could do but wait for day.

"No, Speck, you can't have any. For one thing, I'm still hungry, and for another, it's not your turn yet." Iolaus snatched the bit of apple out of reach of the darkly mottled griffin and crunched it between his teeth, washing it down with another swallow of water. He had been feeding himself and the griffins in turns, just in case they got a little too hungry. Their beaks weren't strong enough yet to tear him apart, but they were sharp.

It was past midnight, and the mother - father? - griffin had still not returned. That had to mean it had gone back to deal with the second intruder upon its territory, and that Hercules had dealt with it in turn. Iolaus tried not to think about other possibilities, such as that the griffin might have feasted on demigod instead and decided to sleep it off before taking to the air.

"Ack! Tiny, stop that!" He shook the smallest griffin down from his shoulder, where it had been trying to nestle in his hair. All the others milled around him, gobbling and squawking, and the smallest griffin wriggled into his lap and stared up at him imploringly.

"OK, OK, you can have some bread, but don't peck my fingers this time, all right?" Tiny tugged the crust of bread out of his hand as delicately as a well-trained horse taking a lump of sugar, and he grinned. "Good boy."

Eventually the griffins quieted, and Iolaus began to think about sleep. The wind had picked up, but the walls of the nest were thick and well-padded on the inside with griffin down. Still, some of the smaller griffins were shivering, and as soon as Iolaus lay down they huddled up against him.

He had heard Hercules long before he could see him. That first "Iolaus!" had been a long, hoarse cry, almost unintelligible, and Iolaus had shivered at the lost sound of it.

But he had called back, "I'm here," and now he was listening to Hercules' grunting breaths as he heaved himself out of the canyon and onto the nest.

"Hi," he said airily as Hercules swung himself over the edge. "What took you so long?"

For a moment Hercules just stood there, breathing like a bellows, and then the griffins rushed him.

"Hey! Hey, no, he's a friend! Stop that!"

Iolaus grabbed the griffins by their necks, tails, anything, but as soon as he had dragged one away another would half-run, half-fly into Hercules again until Hercules began swatting them away with great sweeping gestures.

At last the griffins settled down around Iolaus, but they still squawked and hissed at Hercules, beating their wings at him whenever he tried to come closer.

Hercules sat down upon the soft down floor and started to laugh. "Only you," he said between gasping breaths, "only you, Iolaus."

"What?" Iolaus said, and grinned. He reached out cautiously and clasped Hercules' arm. "Hey, how's your shoulder?"

"Fine," Hercules said, catching his breath at last. "Are you all right? You think you can make it down?"

Iolaus nodded. If he couldn't, Hercules would catch him. He picked up his bag, started to stand, and stopped. The griffins gobbled at him.

"Herc? We need to come back here, throw down a deer for them or something. Otherwise they'll starve."

Hercules just stared at him.

"Why are you looking at me like that? They haven't done anything. And we killed their parents-"

Hercules' brows drew down. "Just tell me one thing. Did you name them?"

Iolaus scuffed his boot in the down. "Well..."
Please post a comment on this story.