Of HALO leaps and Cuan Sidhe

To the east part two... Intellectual property of me. Jared G. Juckiewicz. Copyright goes to the same... by this point, you all should know the drill... I don't think I need to make any warnings, but this is, well, written by me, and featuring the Valkyrien cast so if I've missed anything, you could probably see it coming. More terminology notes. Cuan, or Cuain, or Cuaine, is again Gaellic. It means Hound or Dog.

Anyway. Have Fun...
And don't do anything Gorm wouldn't. Not that that narrows down the list of acceptable behaviours much...

I hate drops. Particularly I hate HALO drops. As if jumping out of a plane isn't bad enough, I had to vault out of one at the upper limit of my ability. And then to hold off opening my chute till the latest possible moment. Oh, and to make matters worse, we were dropping into mountains. DZ's the size of a postage stamp. A small postage stamp. I reckon our flights were the lucky ones. They could pull out if they saw themselves coming in too tight. Hell, they did. We had to land, and land hard. Illuss and our squad landed first, and shortly after it, Custer and his men landed too. They were shorter, swarthy types, with the look of one of the native tribes from the Rockies. And each of them had a certain... wilder... cast about them. Next to land were Tyrone Ui Neill and his Sidhe. They too were swarthy and dark, with the look of the native Eire, differing only from the norm in the pointy ears. Following them were the trio of Ogres and the half dozen Goblins bearing our artillery element, three mortars, 120mm tubes. The two Buteo birdmen, Hawk Bloody-Feathers, and his mate Aquila wheeled back to settle in the trees, followed closely by the three Gryffons, two of them broadwinged eagle types, Golden by the look of them, with Lion hindquarters, whose names none of us could pronounce. They settled for Birdie and Budgie with the strange whistling coughs that were Gryffon laughter. The third was black from his beak to his tail, Raven at the fore, and Black Panther behind. He was called Hugin, or Ravenwing. Next to them settled the pair of Gryfalcon we had been assigned, Pip and Baran, both with the colouration of Peregrines on their feathered torsos, but with hindparts like the cougar or the puma.
First task was to set up a base camp. The flyers sought a suitable location, and then led us to it. Setting camp was easy. The Sidhe and Elf would sleep happily in the trees, and the rest of us could shelter under them. They were thick conifers, with branches hanging to the ground. A few hours work with hatchets, of which we had plenty, and we had shelter for everyone. Each squad had three Firs, and each of the mortars its own. The winged ones would sleep perched in the trees. Come dawn we would begin our hunt. As dusk fell, we all began our preparations. Some sharpened blades. Others loaded magazines. The winged ones checked harnesses and ammo-feeds, and sharpened clawed gauntlets that fitted over their hindquarters. And I'll tell you, its not often you find a belt-fed rocket launcher with a bayonet. And almost as uncommon are bayoneted miniguns. None but a Gryffon could wield one. Even the Gyrfalcon settle for simple SAW's, or possibly something alongst the lines of an M-60. We have the E2 variant of those, where most of the problems with overheating and jamming have been solved. Hugin, Vixen and I simply sat and discussed things, sharing our meal of MRE's and promising ourselves better come the morrow. Manflesh likely. Tyrone and his Sidhe left just before dark, slipping out of camp unnoticed.
Sometime after dark, we heard chanting, strange chanting. I could recognise some of it as the Gael, and Elf, who speaks that tongue shivered, as a chill walked down her spine. At midnight, howls rang out from the same direction as the chanting. Those howls came from throats similar to human, and they were answered by Vixen and myself, and those of Custer's warriors who were Canid shifters. About half of those, so the six howls we heard were answered by five of our own. And those in turn were answered by another six. But it was no earthly hound or wolf that had loosed these cries. Uncanny was the song, and fey, and terrible, and it sent even a shiver down my spine. Not long after, Tyrone and the Sidhe returned, being greeted by the barrels of almost a score and a half of weapons. Those howls had us all a little twitchy. Turns out, we need not have been, for beside each of his Gall-Gaelidh strode a great hound, with the look of an Irish Wolfhound. Their fur was twined and twisted with leaves and vines, and hung long off their lithe, lean frames. Their eyes burned with green fire, and Elf whispered reverently "Cuan Sidhe" Elfhounds, summoned from the far realms by the magic of the Black Tyrone. If it was havoc our employers wanted, it would be had, for the Cuan Sidhe could track anything, was devilishly hard to kill, and fast, and full of fury. And strong. and Smart. This looked to be a good mission, a good mission indeed.