The Last Satyr: The Two Paths Part 2

The boy was visiting with Marroh in the hospital care unit when Amien found him.

“Come,” he quickly said to the boy. “We’re leaving.”

“Where are we going?”

“We leave the city,” said Amien. “And in haste! Where is young Joe?”

“In there,” said the boy motioning towards the next room. “I shall get him.”

Marroh looked up from his bed at the man of the west. “Bad news?” he asked.

Amien nodded. “It is grave,” he admitted. “The enemy army under Lolth makes ready to attack Thera Pass. She is no longer delayed. We must get out now before that happens. Can you travel?”

“If not very fast and not very far.”

“In other words,” replied Amien with a smile, “you’re better than ever?”

But Marroh shook his head in a reluctant reply. “Even if I was. I still wouldn’t leave. We dwarves don’t run from a fight. It would set a bad precedent for us short people. I will stay here in the city.”

“If you stay here, you will not come out alive,” warned Amien.

“And what are the other dwarves doing?”

“They’re staying,” answered the man.

“Then so am I.”

“I understand,” said Amien softly. “It grieves me to part with one as young and noble as you. I shall miss you, Marroh of Durham.’

“And I shall miss you too, Amien of the West.”

“In the next life, then?” asked Amien, offering the dwarf his hand.

The dwarf shook it in the bargain. “Or sooner,” he added. “We haven’t left this one yet.”

Graybeard assembled their company outside the keep of Mills Breath. They now numbered only the boy, Amien, Ronthiel, and young Joe. However, Sar stood at muster with a thousand armed satyrs, the wounded being left behind in the city. These remaining satyrs at least now carried man-orc armor, light and inadequate though it was. Leradien was climbing the Three Candles and no longer with them.

The dwarves had lined up on each side of the marching satyrs, each one holding up a burning torch to honor them, forming a lighted lane.

There was much silence amongst the dwarves at their leaving, and the disappointment was obvious in their eyes. But there was no second thoughts in them for having rescued the satyrs from Thera Pass. For a dwarf will always fight for a friend and with nary a second thought of regret and they felt these satyrs were friends. They knew they were the last ones living and so not to be lost here.

When it came time for them to march out, the satyrs took out their flutes and played them, and all played the same song as they filed out through the seven gates. The rugged terrain of the surrounding cavern walls stretched out before them, their jagged rocks silhouetted against the distant light shafts of The Three Candles. The air was crisp and tinged with the scent of tallow, and a gentle breeze whispered through their ranks, carrying the haunting melody of the satyrs’ song.

It has always been said that satyrs play their hearts and not words. This time, though, they had words in their hearts as they played and every dwarf understood the words as clearly as if they'd been sung.

The music started in soft and low at first, then it started to grow. It began as a tale of capture, enslavement, and woe, and was played in the tongue of the drow. But the music took on hope and comfort and, with gathering strength, could be heard as far as the Black Dragons waiting outside the city. It was now played with lifting spirits, hailing the followers of Shinayne.

And now the song changed to take on the steady beat of the dwarf working songs and the dwarves on the walls heard a rising tune unlike any they had ever heard before. It told of great dwarves of mighty deeds and courage and of friendship warm and true. And the strength of the song grew stronger, and told of the works of Arnen Fang and the death of his son, and of victory, and the camaraderie of three different races united in a common cause. The flutes played and piped off into the darkness and even the boy played his flute too and marched with them. For he knew the song without ever having heard it or played it before, as did all the satyrs, for they all shared the same hearts.

There wasn’t a dwarf in Mills Breath that didn’t have a tear in his eye. Yea! Even Arnen Fang shed a tear at their leaving and smiled.

They had made a song to him, and he was still alive to hear it.

A long, winding road led the way up the steep side of Ritter Mark Cavern and the going was slow, even for hoofed satyrs, and always with the women and children of the dwarves ahead. Yet it was the drow of the Black Dragons in their adamantine armor who worked the hardest of all to keep up. Thus, though they climbed ever higher, the distance between them and Mills Breath seemed to barely increase, if at all. And after a while, they suddenly saw far off lights in the darkness behind them.

“Shinayne,” asked Amien. “What lights are those?”

She studied them for a while and then answered, “Torches.”

“Dwarf torches?”

“Yes,” she said. “They are coming from Thera Pass.”

“Are those torches moving?”

“Yes,” she answered slowly as she watched. “Those who carry them are running this way.”

There was a moment’s pause of silence between them all, and then Amien asked her. “How do you count it?”

“I see ten tens of torches,” replied the drow woman.

Amien waited and asked, “Tell me what else your drow eyes see?”

“I see many orcs, hobgoblins, and drow chasing behind the torches.”

“The enemy has broken through Thera Pass,” concluded Graybeard. “The dwarves retreat.”

“Perhaps you can dazzle their pursuers?” asked Amien.

“Not without my also dazzling our own Black Dragons.”

But Graybeard stepped to the front anyway and raised his staff. “Shinayne,” he said, “order your people to close their eyes and look the other way.”

Even as the order was being given, as they watched, one by one the torches of the running dwarfs stopped, fell, and went out. The moving lights quickly grew fewer and fewer until there were none. Not one reached the gates of Mills Breath.

Five hundred dwarves were suddenly gone, ceasing to exist.

“Lolth’s army has arrived,” Shinayne reported, watching. “I see it now divides. I count three anthills worth with ten fire beetles amongst them approaching Mills Breath and another five anthills with two fire beetles follow behind us.”

“She does not do as I anticipated,” observed Graybeard. “She attacks Mills Breath when the drider is with us. That is hardly logical.”

“Lolth does not rule by logic,” replied Shinayne. “She rules by cruelty. Cruelty demands that Mills Breath be sacked and razed as a reward for her army.”

“Can she take it with only an army of three anthills?”

“It is a low priority, but the force that attacks is of pure-blooded orcs, goblins, and drow. They see twice as far as the man-orcs that laid siege to the city before. With ten fire beetles, the city shall fall,” said Shinayne.

“What of the enemy that pursues us?” asked Amien.

“It contains no goblins and has a man-orc of a type that I have not seen before,” she said. “They are like the man-orcs of Vhaeraun but of a different breed. And there are not very many drow amongst them—one for every ten and two man-orcs, I imagine. But they are more than enough to destroy us. Their archers will take out the satyr’s poor armor, their armor being useful only for charging, and they shall send their man-orc slaves and fire beetles against my Black Dragons. With dwarf women and children amongst us to slow us down, they shall soon catch up.”

“No. I do not think so,” said Graybeard, who raised his staff and waited for the Black Dragons to pass safely behind him and obey the order to close their eyes. “Those few drow you see with the man-orcs are officers. Them I can dazzle. Are your people still turned away with their eyes closed?”

“Yes.”

“Let them not witness this,” he warned Shinayne as his staff let out a bright flash of light that lit up all the plains of Romar.

Black bodies were massed upon the plains like ants, eight thousand strong. The light illuminated them as far as Thera Pass. Graybeard’s staff remained bright and did not lessen until he finally lowered it.

“They will not catch up with us for now, for their commanders are dazzled and Lolth is not amongst them or she would have cast a spell of darkness over her army against my staff. She has chosen not to enter Ritter Mark Cavern,” he stated. “She fears the drider. You may safely look now, Shinayne.”

“An entire army led by the blind,” said Amien in observation.

Shinayne now looked for herself before answering Amien. “The orcs and drow that march on Mills Breath have stopped,” she observed after a few moments. “But those following us are neither orcs nor drow. These are man-orcs that can stand the sun. They are another of Lolth’s breeds like Vhaeraun’s. We must hurry, for I see they cannot be dazzled nor blinded.”

From the roadway leading up, those that trudged towards the Three Candles could still look down on the plains of Romar. As the steep climb took all day, they could watch Lolth’s army attacking Mills Breath as it quickly recovered from Graybeard’s light staff. After only a few hours, they counted ten softly glowing giant fire beetles advancing across the plain.

The giant fire beetles, impervious to harm, soon reached the city walls. With relentless determination, they moved like living battering rams. Their armored shells clinked with the sound of impending catastrophe.

They could not be stopped; every dwarf weapon applied to them within would be useless.