Forest Kingdom Trilogy 2 - Blood and Honor

the mocking laughter of the fleeing gargoyles. Damon Cord stood perched on a bulky chimneystack, calling orders that were mostly redundant even before he finished giving them. Those gargoyles were fast.
    Catriona Taggert pulled herself up through the open trapdoor and out on to the roof. She shivered once at the cold wind, glared disgustedly around her, and then shook her head. As if she didn't have enough problems, she now had orders to capture each and every one of the gargoyles intact. If the orders hadn't come from the Regent himself, she'd have told him where to stick them. And even then, it had been close.
    Apparently, the current belief at Court was that when the Unreal outbreaks had passed, the gargoyles would go back to being statues again. When that happened, the Regent wanted them intact, on the grounds that replacing them with new stone carvings would cost a small fortune. The Regent was well known for being very careful with a ducat. All of which meant that Taggert couldn't kill the gargoyles, or even do anything that might risk damaging them. Which was why so many of her best men were currently running round the roof like idiots, waving bloody big butterfly nets.
    We'd better catch something soon, thought Taggert dryly, or I'm going to have a mutiny on my hands . . .
    She clambered unsteadily across the uneven roof, heading for Damon Cord. At any other time, she might have stopped to admire the view. Castle Midnight's roof was an architect's nightmare of tiles and slates and chimneys, rising here and there into peaks and gables for no apparent reason, and peppered with pipes and protrusions and anything else the Castle's designers had felt at the time might be a good idea. Under a full moon, it all looked very picturesque. It was also a hell of a roof to have to chase anything over. Particularly gargoyles. The nasty creatures were short and stocky, with lots of teeth and claws, and a set of stubby batwings that luckily weren't strong enough to let the gargoyles do more than glide a few feet at a time. They were definitely dangerous, and vicious by temperament, but as yet hadn't managed to inflict any real injuries on the chasing
    guards. Probably because the damned things were laughing too hard. They'd never had such a good time.
    Taggert watched, wincing, as a guard slowly closed the gap between him and a fleeing gargoyle. The creature was whooping happily, carefully keeping his speed down to the point where the guard still thought he had a chance of catching the thing. Of course, the moment the guard got too close, the gargoyle just put on a burst of speed and vanished into the shadows. The guard skidded to a halt, looked frantically around him, and then threw down his butterly net and jumped up and down on it. Watching gargoyles rolled around on the slates, giggling hysteri-cally. Two guards tried to jump a running gargoyle from different sides. The creature stopped dead in its tracks at just the right moment, and the two guards slammed into each other. They ended up in a dazed, cursing pile. Watching gargoyles leant helplessly on each other, shaking with laughter. The gargoyle who'd caused the collision howled with glee, and Damon Cord leant out from his chimneystack and clipped the creature neatly above the left ear with his mallet.
    The gargoyle looked very surprised, blinked once and fell over. The fallen guards finished untangling themselves from their nets and set about tangling up the snoring gargoyle.
    Taggert made her way over to join Cord. He grinned down at her and started to brandish his mallet triumphantly. His smile quickly faded away as he took in her grim face. He sighed heavily, and climbed down from the chimneystack.
    'All right, what have I done wrong this time? I didn't kill it; just rattled its brains a little.'
    'That's not the point,' said Taggert carefully. You had to explain things very clearly to Cord, or he sulked. 'The point is, you've been up here for over two hours, and all you've got to show for it is one gargoyle. The other forty-nine are still charging round the roof and crapping in the guttering. And I hate to think what they've been doing down the chimneys, but the smell in the kitchens is appalling. How many men have you got up here, Damon?'
    Cord's eyes unfocused as he counted silently, trying not to move his lips. 'Thirty-two,' he said finally.
    'Thirty-two men, and it's taken you two hours to catch one gargoyle.' Taggert sighed, deeply. 'I should have come up