The Last Satyr: The Company is Formed Part 1

Today’s lesson was completely different. As in the First War with the Dark Elves, this Second War was obviously with the drow, though never explicitly named. Yet there were no Light Elves mentioned—no, not even a single one. That was because none of them had fought in the war. The actual participants came as a great shock to the entire class. Charging into the center of the Dark Elves’ Army was a cavalry of horse-mounted satyrs! Their determined hooves reverberated through the earth, each step resonating with a promise of impending doom for their foes.

The story unfolded with an image of blood-soaked landscapes and thunderous clashes, a stark contrast to the serene halls of the classroom. The idea of satyrs riding horses and fighting wars was completely foreign to the boy and it painted vivid scenes that seared themselves into his imagination. Spears gleamed like flashes of lightning in the sun’s fleeting rays, and the sheer force of the satyrs’ charge sent shockwaves through the enemy lines. He had never heard anything like it. Nor did any of his classmates, who listened with an equally foreign response. Yet the teacher taught it as if it were true, a tale of bloody carnage. The battles were a back-and-forth duel of chaos and strategy, the air filled with war cries and clashing steel. The dead lay piled up all over the battlefields, the bodies waist-deep at times. The tale was confusing to the boy who, unlike the elves, had a hard time memorizing names, so he often couldn’t remember who was who.

There were times he heard the name of someone, just minutes ago, identified as a satyr, fighting through the enemy and piling them up like humans do cordwood. And just as he was about to make this particular satyr his hero, he found out he wasn’t a satyr at all but a Dark Elf and all his previously hated victims, satyrs.

And then he would hear a name, formerly linked in his mind with the Dark Elves, hacking and killing his way through the opposing ranks until the boy wished someone would finally kill this murderous fiend only to find the attacker was a satyr and the ranks he hacked his way through were the despised Dark Elves! So it was all very complicated to the boy while, at the same time, incredibly fascinating.

But while the boy was getting most of the battles wrong, he was able to get the general gist of the war right. It began when Lolth’s army came to the surface for a second time to do battle with the Light Elves. Yet it was Sar, the keeper of the satyrs, to the surprise of the class, who ordered his followers to destroy the invaders and drive them back underground.

The fighting was always short but vicious, for the Dark Elves would win by night when they could see, and the satyrs couldn’t, but then they’d lose by day when blinded by the sunlight and the satyrs weren’t. Each side timed their attacks by the sun—the Dark Elves charging out of their holes at sunset and the satyrs counterattacking at dawn. The satyrs quickly cleared the land of Dark Elves to the north and south, destroying two of Lolth’s armies, but it was different in the east and west. Here, the satyrs got the worst of it. The battles were terrible and terrifying. There were many stories of heroes on both sides, though the greatest heroes of the Dark Elves were all “back shooters” who hid behind trees with their bows and poison darts.

The satyrs always surged forward like a storm, their magnificent thoroughbred horses’ hooves pounding the earth like thunder as they rode into battle, their spears gleaming under the sun. Across the battlefield, the Dark Elves were a shadowy presence, their crossbows like silent serpents ready to strike, while they mounted huge, eerie lizards that slithered through the chaos like phantoms. And then, the true nightmare emerged—the monstrous spiders known as ‘steeders,’ a horrific cavalry born from the offspring of Lolth, scuttling and crawling like nightmares given life.

From a distance, the Dark Elves and their arrows took a terrible toll on the satyrs, while up close with their spears, the satyrs took a terrible toll on the Dark Elves. Yet the “up close” battles were not entirely uneven, for the poisonous steeder spiders of the Dark Elves did kill the horses of the satyrs and drained them of their life’s blood. Soon, the satyrs were without horses, and without horses, they could not get close enough to the enemy to use their spears fast enough before the enemy escaped underground.

Worse, a drider was involved (a name for a drow that is half spider), a drow assassin who bit the leader of the satyrs. Her venom left him limp as a fish for days.

During those dark days, the satyrs lost every battle, and the war seemed lost until an army of wild women arrived to take the side of the satyrs, wrapping their naked bodies with poisonous snakes and falling upon the Dark Elves and killing them in their deadly embrace, thereby momentarily stopping the Dark Elves’ attack. The boy had never heard of these women before. His teacher named them only once (The boy remembered it started with a 'B'), but from his description of them, the boy found himself wishing he could meet one, for they obviously thought quite highly of satyrs, and he wondered if they were beautiful or not (In his imagination, they were.). But the fate of the women or their name their teacher did not give again in the story.

But the fate of the satyrs certainly was. Without horses, their numbers were down (but the boy noted the number of dead Dark Elf “heroes” outnumbered the number of dead satyr heroes), and certain defeat narrowly staved off only by the 'B' women. The only good news was that their leader had recovered and, in the delirium of the drider’s poison, he had seen a plan by which to win the war. Victory without horses, he declared, meant taking the enemy on at night when they least expected it. To the boy, it sounded like a crazy plan, and he wondered if their leader was still under the effects of the drider’s bite.

The satyr’s leader ordered all the wine of their land brought to the valley of the next expected battle along with every torch to be found. Then, as the Dark Elves marched forward from their caves at sunset, the satyrs retreated, abandoning the huge stocks of wine. The enemy stopped upon this discovery, for they had no such fine mead or ale or berry wine of their own, and they did savor the captured supply and did drink it. And when they were drunk enough, the satyrs lit their torches, grabbed their spears, came forward and did so slaughter their drunken enemy that, when the dawn came, there was not a live Dark Elf to be found anywhere. And after that, Lolth’s armies remained underground and came out no more and here the book ended.

It also ended with everyone's eyes on the boy as the lesson was clearly given especially for him. The wonder of why filled their eyes, but the teacher offered no explanation.

Draugo immediately challenged the story as a myth without foundation, even though the teacher cited the name of the Elfish author. The other students all had questions. Satyrs riding horses? Carrying spears and attacking drow riding spiders? And where were the Light Elves while all this was going on? The boy too had his own question, eagerly waving his hand to be called. Oh! Oh! Me! Me! Me! What about those naked wild women?

But after the history lesson reading, the teacher declined to answer their questions directly and, instead, turned himself into a living bulletin board and read off “notices” of class meetings and societies and things for such discussions until it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of doom. For elves will hold special meetings for as few as one student interested in a subject—and sometimes hold such meetings for none. There were teachers known to speak to an empty house. Not that they didn’t realize there was no one listening as much as they thought their subject simply ought to be said. But not one of the clubs or meetings mentioned had anything to do with satyrs fighting and riding horses or the wild women.

All this was to provide a break to prepare the class for what was coming next, which, of course, was some other lesson for all except the boy who usually slept through them.

But if you found that next lesson not to your liking, the living “bulletin board” would recite the alternatives once again on how to direct you to the subject and class of your own choosing. Often, elves clashed on what ought to be taught and, even more often, over what ought to be listened to. For this reason, the girls were usually let out of school first—not to end their learning—but to even add to it. For girls were expected to take additional separate classes in gardening, sewing, weaving, cooking, child care, and—well—El knows what else. The boy was ever so thankful he wasn’t born a girl, as their classes never stopped. He often swore to himself that if he’d been born a girl, he’d have dragged himself to the nearest cliff and flung himself off it. And he would have hit the bottom with the deepest gratitude.

But the boy never once objected to this abuse of women via forced learning one twit. He figured if some girl was willing to learn all that stuff just to be his personal slave, it was in his best interests to let her do so. He was quite willing to watch the whole female herd leave early for their forced labor camps. Although that drudgery wouldn’t happen for some time yet. The girls would first be expected to stay long enough to learn about 'men’s business'—not that they expected the girls to actually learn it or that anyone actually wanted them to learn it. The object of the lesson, when including the girls in 'men’s business' classes, was that 'men’s business' was really none of their business and it was better left to the men. And, if a girl learned this lesson, then she could expect to earn a good grade and a good husband—well, maybe not a good husband, but at least a husband.

“Next,” the teacher announced, “in light of our last reading, we will discuss our cousins, the drow.”

Well! You could have heard a needle fall off a pine tree outside the window after that announcement. The elves were so quiet, you’d think they forgot to breathe. Nobody talked about drow. Nobody! To make it a class subject was unheard of. In fact, the whole time he had read the war of the “Dark Elves,” their teacher had never once mentioned them by the forbidden word “drow”.

“Many of you are probably familiar with drow,” he said, “but never talk about them. And, while it would be nice to pretend they don’t exist, they do. Therefore, no elf or satyr,” he added for the boy’s ears, “can consider his education complete without a discussion of them. Does anyone know how we are related to them?”

Rebecca raised her hand, and he called upon her.

“They are our split-offs,” she said.

“That is correct,” the teacher said. “It seems we elves so displeased Azazel that he decided that, by creating our exact opposites, he should improve on us. Does anyone here believe that the intended result happened?”

The response was stone-cold silence. Yet Draugo shifted uncomfortably, as if he wanted to say something.

“Can anyone here offer an opinion on drow?” he asked.

Ronthiel offered his.

“They’re insane elves,” he said. “They fight all the time. The only known purpose of a drow is to go crazy and kill others.”

Draugo looked like he strongly disagreed.

“What else?” the teacher asked.

“They’re so busy killing each other, they can’t organize,” a girl named Lara Dune added.

“For which we can all be thankful for,” the teacher said. “However, not entirely true. They can work well in an organized fashion, as our history lesson this morning showed, so long as that organization is provided by their keeper. And who,” he asked, “can tell us who their keeper is?”

The boy raised his hand.

“Lolth,” he said, “Graybeard’s split off.”

“Who told you she is Graybeard’s split off?”

“He did,” the boy answered. “He told me so just the day before yesterday.”

“You?” the teacher studied him with obvious doubt. “Graybeard told you this?”

“He did,” the boy replied.

“Well! That is an interesting point of conjecture, but I’m bound to remind the class to consider the source.”

Meaning satyrs were liars when it served them. As this was true, the boy couldn’t argue.

But things were about to get even more interesting on the subject of drow, the elves’ worst enemy, and the purpose of the lesson did not go as planned.