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children? He wondered about that as he watched Veria kneeling before the statue, unable to hear her whispered prayers. Veria and Parni had three little mop topped tearaways that ran around the village causing mayhem as children were supposed to. To bring her out all this way through the dangerous forest on her own, it had to be something serious, and he couldn't think of anything else that would compel her to make the journey. Could they be sick? Children too often came down with fevers and other maladies. Sometimes they didn't recover. Might they have run into the forest and been taken by wolves? It happened sometimes. Usually in winter when prey was scarce and the wolves were hungry and lurking around the edges of town. Or was it something else?
    Dorn didn't know. But he did know that they were good kids. Innocents. If there was any hope that her prayers would be answered by the ancient goddess, then he would add his own to them.
    As she knelt before the statue after placing her offering of wild flowers on the table in front of the goddess, he became aware once more of just how motherly the goddess was. Standing there on a stone plinth five feet high, she stood tall, easily eight feet or so, with a baby nestled in her left arm suckling at her breast while she held a sword proudly above her in her right hand.
    The masons who had carved the statue however long ago had put a lot of effort into their work, polishing the stone smooth, making the textures of the skin and the robe she wore seem almost real.
    They had paid particular attention to her face, gifting her with nobility and compassion as well as the righteous fury of a mother defending her family.
    He wasn't really a believer in her, or in any of the gods, new or old, but he'd always considered that in Xeria they'd found someone who at least seemed worthy of the title of goddess. Maybe that was in part because he had lost his own mother. And perhaps that was why he did make offerings to her every week. Just in case. And maybe too it was because in Lampton Heights making an offering to any god other than Dica would have got you killed. Praying to her was an act of defiance, even if the black priests never found out about it.
    Movement caught his eye and he looked away from the woman to the forest behind her. Or rather to the skies above them. Then his blood ran cold.
    “Shite!”
    It was a harpy. There was no way he could be mistaken. The ungainly way the creature soared through the air was distinctive. As were the huge triangular wings that were more like flaps of leather that stretched between her arms and legs and which were covered with patches of diseased looking feathers. And of course she had the head of a woman; an incredibly ugly woman.  Once you had seen a harpy you would never mistake them for anything else.
    But worse than that was why she was here. She was hunting. He realised that in the same instant that he realised she was heading straight for Veria. At a guess she’d followed the woman almost from Little Rock, but had been unable to attack her while she was in the forest. Trees would get in the way. But out in the open of the fortress she had her chance.
    Automatically he notched the arrow, rolled on to his side so that he could use the bow without standing, and pulled back on the string as the harpy flew closer. While it would be a mistake to get involved and to expose himself, he couldn’t allow a woman to be killed in front of him and do nothing. Not someone he knew. And harpies only killed. They might look vaguely human, but they weren’t. They were predators.
    The moment came as he'd known it would. The harpy banked in mid-air, extending her wings out wide to stop her forwards motion and let her feet hang down so she could simply drop on Veria who still hadn’t spotted her. And when she showed him her chest his decision was made.
    Dorn loosed the arrow and knew it was good even before it hit. It took her straight through the heart, if such