Nine: recon
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Talon Mountain was aptly named.
It jutted out of the landscape south of the Whispering Woods, the tallest, grayest, most jagged peak in a range of gray, jagged peaks, scraping up against the sky like giant claws. The Woods stopped well short of the harpy nest. Even the non-magical forest seemed to want nothing to do with it, judging by the way the green trees abruptly gave way to a lifeless terrain of rocks and deadfall.
The weather was likewise unhappy with the area. The sunny skies had been replaced with low-hanging stormclouds, though so far no rain was falling.
"Cheery," Teela said, surveying the mountain from the concealing shelter of the normal forest and the brown cloaks they were all wearing.
"Aye, Captain. Lovely as a harpy's face," one of the Rebels said, sneering it. A low chuckle ran through the other Rebels – four of them here, six of them waiting back at the camp. Ten women in all. They'd been hand-picked, but the selection process had unearthed a very large disadvantage.
Namely: the Great Rebellion had no actual soldiers.
"None of them," Teela had said, her eyebrows steadily climbing up her forehead as she'd processed this news. "No one in this camp has any military experience whatsoever. Not a single person."
"Aside from myself, naturally," Bow had said, winking at her.
On his shoulder, Kowl had hooted. "One fight. Which you had to be rescued from, as I recall!"
"Bow was apprenticing with the Queen's Own Archers when the castle fell. He's been training as many people as he can," Glimmer had explained, while Bow had glared daggers (or was that arrows?) at his friend. "But he doesn't really know any other weapons."
So Teela's plan to rescue Queen Angella from the harpies of Talon Mountain had to be easy and straightforward enough for raw recruits, and consist solely of archery.
Bow's training regimen did, at least, include making raids on Horde supply caravans and other targets of opportunity. Teela had had him select the ten Rebels least likely to panic under fire. One of them, Mally, turned out to be the woman with the sticky toddler from breakfast.
Watching Mally kiss her small son, then hand him off to her friend before joining the rest of the impromptu squadron on the trail… that had put an uncomfortable sting into Teela's heart.
As they'd marched, Teela had told herself it was ridiculous. Many of the men in the Royal Guard, particularly the older ones, were fathers. It never bothered her to send them off into danger.
Mothers were her weak spot, she supposed.
She tried not to feel bitter about it.
Teela's small force also included Madame Razz, Glimmer, and Bow. With all of the usual Rebellion leaders away, the princess had ordered Kowl to stay behind and run things at the Rebel camp.
Kowl had not complained. Teela was choosing to ignore the implications of that.
"Where are the harpies right now?" Teela asked, scanning the desolate landscape.
"They nest in that cavern, Lady Teela," Bow said, coming to stand beside her so he could point it out. She was halfway expecting him to try to put his other hand on her shoulder, or otherwise snuggle up. But he didn't.
Good; a one-handed archer wouldn't be very useful in the coming fight.
The cavern entrance was more or less at ground level, and more or less in the center of the mountain. As she tried to make a rough estimate of dimensions, there was movement inside. Teela squinted. Too far to see.
"Anyone have a –" she began, only to stop herself when Bow held out a spyglass. A plain, old-fashioned spyglass. Couple of lenses in a brass tube.
Teela took the spyglass and turned it over in her hands. For a moment she was a small girl, playing pretend in the forest with Adam – what had they been? Explorers? No, pirates – and the memory dug tiny, deadly thorns into her heart while at the same time bringing a truth into focus.
Bows and arrows. Horses. Paper maps. A spyglass.
No blasters. No sky sleds. No communicators.
"You don't have much technology," she said to the Rebels. "At all. Do you?"
Heads shook.
"The Horde does," one of the women said.
"They don't share," another added, wry, to another round of chuckling.
Mally said, "We steal what we can from their supply lines. But most of it is in the Fright Zone, and we don't go there."
"Another difference between Eternia and Etheria, milady," Bow said. He sounded a little defensive.
Another disadvantage, in other words.
Teela looked at the spyglass again, then shrugged and lifted it to her eye. With a few minor adjustments, the central cavern leapt out in crisp detail.
Well, the exterior of the cavern, anyway. The interior was mostly shadows-on-shadows. Still, Teela could make out a massive pillar (stalagmite, rather) in the middle of the cavern; it abruptly sheared off about fifty yards up from the floor, topped with a spiky, chair-ish mass.
Three guesses where Queen Hunga kept her throne.
A few shadows moved in lazy swoops across the cavern. Not nearly as many, or as often, as might be expected from a cavern that size.
"They're not very active," Teela said, continuing to scan the cavern with the spyglass. She needed a better idea of where Queen Angella might be held. It would be even better if she knew how she was being held. Rescuing someone from a locked and barred cell was completely different than rescuing someone chained to a wall.
Teela should know. She was an expert on being rescued.
Mally said, "They're sleeping, probably."
Nods all around. "Aye, they avoid the light, Captain."
Teela nodded too. That had been covered during the trek to Talon Mountain - a lecture short on tactical details but long on ballads sung by Bow.
Kowl had been right. As a singer, Bow made a great archer.
Regardless, the most pertinent points of Harpy 101 had been: harpies were slow-witted and slow-moving but incredibly strong; they were nocturnal; and Queen Hunga had some kind of magic scepter whose blasts should be avoided at all costs.
As her eyes continued to adjust to the darkness inside the cavern, Teela picked out more details. It looked like there were smaller caves or tunnels that led in and out of the main cavern - something to watch out for when they attacked.
She went back to the throne on its huge pillar, wishing for a bit more light. If I was an evil queen, she thought, with a hated enemy as my prisoner, I'd keep them close for maximum gloating.
Skeletor would do it. Totally.
But would Hunga? If only Teela could see...
The clouds broke for just a moment, and sunlight stabbed into the ground outside the cavern. At the foot of the throne, something moved - something with large, pale wings that reflected the brief sunlight.
Ha! Gotcha.
"I have to get closer," Teela said, lowering the spyglass and tucking it under her cloak. She faced the four Rebels. "I'll need a second with me, to watch my back. Volunteers?"
"I will," Mally said, swift and sure. Perfect. The Rebel woman had a good head on her shoulders.
Bow looked disappointed, but said gamely, "We'll provide cover from here, should you need it, milady."
This "lady" nonsense needed to stop. Technically, as the daughter of the king's Man-At-Arms, she could use the courtesy title Lady Teela. But she didn't, because she'd busted her hump to get her actual title. She narrowed her eyes at Bow and said, "It's Captain Teela, or just Teela. I'm not a lady."
A ragged chorus of "Yes, Captain" and "Aye ma'am" echoed back.
"Whatever you wish," Bow said, flourishing. He might've added a "my lady" to that, but luckily for his teeth and her plan, Teela was already on the move and could plausibly deny hearing it.
She and Mally broke from the cover of the trees and made their way - cautiously, carefully, with a lot of ducking and hiding - across the expanse of tumbled boulders and dead wood, until they were approximately twenty yards from the cavern entrance.
Teela found a good position, lying on her stomach between two boulders and under an old log, its wood gone silver-gray with age. In the shadow of the log, the lens of the spyglass was less likely to give them away.
No need to alert the bad guys that they were up to something.
Mally moved a little ways off, pressed close to a boulder, eyes also glued on the cavern. "All clear, Captain."
Teela grunted acknowledgement and brought the spyglass into focus, finding the throne and the figure at its base once again. From this position, the angle wasn't as good, but she could see that it was a woman, and the wings were feathery, not the more batlike harpy kind.
The wings reminded Teela of Veena for some reason, even though Veena had white feathers and this woman's were pink. Then she realized it was the way that the wings attached: at the small of the back, rather than at the shoulders.
The woman had golden-brown hair and Glimmer's dark skin, and her pink-and-rose clothes were filthy but had once been good quality. She stood and paced around the stalagmite platform - but not all the way. She came up short halfway there, and turned back, in a procession that was both frustrated and resigned.
Teel squinted into the spyglass. Something around the woman's neck… a collar and chain.
Bad guys were so predictable.
She gestured for Mally to join her. "Do you know the queen by sight?"
Mally nodded and took the spyglass. "First Ones be praised," she said after a moment, her voice thick with emotion. "She looks… well, dirty, Captain, but whole."
That had been Teela's assessment too, but it was always smart to get a second opinion.
We'll be back, Your Majesty, she thought, then left the shelter of the log. They picked their way across the field of boulders again to the rest of the recon group.
"It's her," Teela said to Bow's unspoken question. "There's some kind of collar around her neck, and she's chained to the base of the throne. But she seems to be okay."
Murmurs and mutters from the Rebels - but pleased ones.
Hope lit Bow's face as well; it made him look younger. "Well, then," he said, grinning broadly, "let's go share the good news."
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Glimmer, Madame Razz, and the other six Rebels had set up camp just inside the Whispering Woods while Teela's team reconnoitered. No point, after all, in camping in the regular, not-magically-defended forest when you had a perfectly good magical one right there.
So they returned to find tents pitched, dinner bubbling in a pot over a merry little fire, and eight expectant faces that froze as they came through the trees.
"Mother?" Glimmer asked, hope and fear warring in her expression, her posture, her voice. It struck Teela again just how young the girl was. No wonder the Rebels felt protective of her.
Teela looked at Bow and nodded. For once he eschewed any and all of the flamboyant flourishes. "She's there and in one piece," he said simply.
Cheers and applause from the Rebels. Glimmer, eyes suspiciously watery-looking, abruptly gave Madame a big hug; the old witch patted her on the back and beamed at Teela.
"So what's the rescue plan, deary?" Madame asked.
If He-Man had been there, the plan would've been He goes in and we catch the loose ends. Most battle plans were like that when you had a well-nigh-invincible warrior on your side. He-Man would've probably just thrown a boulder at Hunga and then punched her really hard. The end.
But He-Man wasn't there. And for the first time in a long time - not since waking up in that Pelean village, really - Teela got to do the thing she'd trained so hard to do: lead.
She put her hands on her hips and looked at her troops, all silent now, watching her. Trusting her - with their lives, their queen, their future.
Simple, straightforward, mostly archery.
The harpies didn't stand a chance.