The Last Satyr: The Two Paths Part 2

The city of Orlytlar's activity buzzed like a beehive stirred by the threat of invasion. Horns sounded the alarm and soldiers filled the streets, all rushing to their battle stations.

The white haired, dark skinned, commander of the city’s drow garrison, Elisha Xal’quorin, stood outside her headquarters while her subordinates strapped on her sword, armor and fitted her spider helmet to her. A tall woman of authority, she made ready for battle. As her aides did so, one of her messenger aides approached her with news of the source of the alarm. He was an insignificant male secretary, but the message he carried was not.

“We have just received word that a drow company was wiped out on the west road to the last soldier!” he reported with a salute.

“Who attacked them and when?” she asked.

“Captain Ulrich reports it was men from the surface and of the east. He fears Rim Riders. Our sentries report they saw a bright flash of light to the west an hour ago.”

“Captain Ulrich?” Elisha demanded. “What does an orc prison captain know of this?”

“He has taken one of the attackers prisoner.”

The drow commander was instantly alert. “How does an orc captain of East Gate Prison have a prisoner from a battle fought at the West Gate?”

“The prisoner was turned over to him at the East Gate.”

This did not sound right to her. “Why turn the prisoner over at the East Gate? Why not here?”

“I do not know,” the male replied. “A drow turned the prisoner over to the orcs.”

“Why would a drow turn a prisoner over to orcs?” Elisha demanded irately of this suspicious nonconformance. “Get me my steeder! I demand to see Captain Ulrich! Captain Lothien, double the guard on the wall! And you! Find me that drow who turned over that prisoner over to Ulrich!”

Her giant steeder spider was brought to her, and she mounted its saddle, riding it swiftly to the orc section of the city and to East Prison.

If this was an invasion by the Rim Riders, she had to act swiftly. This was the third company of drow to be wiped out in as many weeks outside the gates. It was no longer safe to send patrols out. If the enemy was outside the city, then she would have to stop the patrols, man the walls, and close the city gates.

When she arrived at East Prison, Captain Ulrich was waiting to meet her.

“Where is the prisoner?” she demanded.

“This a way,” answered the orc captain.

He led her into the prison and through its two outer gates. A short corridor led to an inner courtyard lined with barred jail cells. In one stood a human man; handsome, blue-eyed, well built, with a trim beard and a pleasant demeanor. Under other circumstances, she might have found him attractive.

“Open the cell!” she demanded.

The orc obeyed and Elisha stepped through, instantly drawing her knife to the human’s throat and driving him forcefully backward against the cell wall.

“You killed five tens of my soldiers today!”

“And more again tomorrow, I imagine,” he answered softly, without fear.

She noticed that, how his air confidence and certainty was evident in his every quality. He did not act like a prisoner. He did not act with fear. She would change that. “Not if I can help it!” Her knife remained threatening at his throat. “How many of you are there?!”

“More than you can handle,” he replied with that same galling confidence.

Again, she recognized his lack of fear. He either expected rescue or to be spared. He would get neither.

“What is your name?” she demanded, her blade pressing fiercely to his throat.

“My name is Amien.”

“Where do you come from?”

“I come from the north.”

A Rim Rider! It was just as she feared. “Who leads you?”

The man gave no reply. She pressed the knife closer.

“Who leads you?” she repeated.

“King Grendel,” he finally answered her, “and the wizard, Graybeard.”

“Graybeard?” she gasped in surprise. “He’s here?”

“He is.”

“You lie!” Elisha exclaimed. “This is a trick! Graybeard makes his way to Ched Nasad!”

The man shook his head. “He is here,” he told her. “Graybeard has been here for several weeks. He was a guest here in this very prison. You should know that.”

“And where is he now?”

“He is wherever he attacks next. You should not have to wait long for your answer. I am here to discuss your surrender terms.”

"Surrender?" she scoffed with a haughty laugh. "You haven't taken the city yet!"

"We've eliminated your patrols and surrounded your city,” Amien told her, steadfastly looking her in the eye. “Surrender or starve.”

The drow woman released her knife and let him go.

“Shall I hav' him executed?” asked Ulrich, with a hungry grin for fresh meat.

“No. So long as he knows anything about Graybeard, Lolth will want us to keep him alive until she can question him.”

“We can question him,” replied Ulrich. “If we eat his limbs off, one at a time, he'll talk!”

“He already talks,” she said, exiting the cell. “Or did you not notice? I want him alive and in one piece for Lolth or it shall be your head!”

The orc captain looked at the prisoner as he locked the cell behind her.

“Before Lolth is done with you, you’ll wish we had eaten you alive!” he told Amien grimly.

Elisha rode back to her command post, her mind racing like her steeder, galloping through a labyrinth of decisions. In military battle, bold decisions, so long as not reckless, usually carry the battle. She needed to make such a decision, one carefully and well thought out. With Graybeard here, there was no reason to maintain troops at Ched Nasad. Yet Lolth had ordered her to send their troops there. To recall them was to disobey her direct order. Yet leaving them there with the very sought-after enemy just outside the gate could lead to the possible loss of the city and an enemy victory.

By the time she reached her headquarters, she recognized her proper course. She would seek to confirm Graybeard was here and, if he was, recall their troops from Ched Nasad to defend the city against him and the Rim Riders’ army.

Leradien moved along the drider gate of the city, her spider body caked in mud to change her shell color from black to brown. The guards manning the walls would pay little attention to a drider anyway but, if they had orders to be on the alert for her, they would be looking for a black drider and not a brown one.

Leradien studied the base of the city walls. According to Marroh, they would have been built the city with a secret tunnel beneath. “Those who build walls to keep the enemy out,” he had told her. “Also build tunnels for themselves to get out if the enemy gets in.”

Both drow and elves have a high ability to spot secret passageways, and Leradien was both. When she reached the east wall of the city, she found the secret entrance she was looking for and returned to the others.

Commander Elisha called in all the outside patrols for reports of the enemy. Any patrol that failed to return would be taken as proof the enemy was in their sector. Strangely, all the patrols reported back with none missing. It meant the enemy was only to their west. She quickly sent several dire bat riders to investigate in that direction.

They had still not found or identified the mysterious drow that handed over the prisoner at the East Gate, but she expected him to be located within the hour. Meanwhile, the walls were manned and a contingent of drow steeder cavalry waited for the order to head out the gates to charge the enemy if the need arose. There was no need to panic yet.

Suddenly, a bright light coming from the east illuminated the ceiling of the great cavern above her and it became bright as day before the light faded away, blinding almost the entire city.

Mass disorganization followed with nearly everyone dazzled, including every guard on the east wall. Commander Elisha, herself blinded, ordered half the wall guards of the west wall, who had their backs to the light burst, to change walls and reinforce the east where hardly a guard now remained not dazzled. Doubtlessly, that wall would be attacked next.

The now blinded Commander Elisha faced a situation in which someone had attacked her city first from the west and now blinded her forces from the east. It put her on the defense. The existence of the bright light confirmed Graybeard was here. Only he could produce it. She ordered a dire bat rider to fly to Ched Nasad as quickly as possible and recall their troops from there.

Moments after the white flash erupted from behind her, Leradien rushed a section of the east wall between two blockhouses. The towering walls of Orlytlar loomed above her, their imposing stone structures casting long shadows that seemed to reach out hungrily into the darkness.

The night air was thick with danger, the distant sounds of alarms and hurried footsteps echoing from the ramparts, mingling with the faint rustle of her own movements. This was her moment, her chance to strike swiftly and silently against the drow and orc guards who patrolled the vulnerable east wall.

With a graceful, almost ghostly motion, Leradien scaled the wall of the city with Ronthiel on her back, her needle-sharp claws finding their way up the rough stone surface. Her movements were fluid, like a shadowy dancer in the moonlight, as she silently ascended. The only evidence of her presence was a faint, almost imperceptible scratching as her claws gripped the stone.

Reaching the top of the wall, Leradien emerged from the shadows, her eight spindly legs carrying her rapidly with a smooth, eerie grace. Her beautiful eyes gleamed with determination as she surveyed the scene before her. Drow and orc guards, caught off guard by the sudden illumination that had left them dazzled and disoriented, were easy targets.

With a flick of her many spear like claws, Leradien struck like lightning. Her first target, an orc, never even had time to cry out. One by one, they silently dropped as she ran along the top of the wall with no alarm given.

The element of surprise was her greatest weapon, and she wielded it with deadly efficiency, leaving a trail of lifeless bodies in her wake to unfold against the backdrop of the city’s chaos.

Yet, even as she dispatched her enemies with chilling precision, Ronthiel clung to her back, his agile hands sending arrows flying at a moment’s notice. The fairy fire she cast illuminated his path, ensuring that his arrows would find their marks with deadly accuracy. The two would leave a lasting mark on the city’s darkest hour.

The east wall, now lay a lifeless graveyard. The drow and orcs had been caught off guard, their bodies lying strewn everywhere along the battlements in chaos. Their senses disoriented by the blinding light, they had paid the price for their complacency.

Then she left the city wall carrying Ronthiel with her as fast as possible and leaving that bloody mess of the enemy behind as their two’s calling card.

Within minutes, Commander Elisha learned the dreaded news. An entire section of the east wall had fallen to attack and been overrun. It meant the enemy was now in the city, having stormed the wall. The question of whether she could hold the city was now in doubt. The bright flash of light had told her Graybeard was indeed here. He was not at Ched Nasad. Against his light staff, her troops would be helpless while those at Ched Nasad were useless. She ordered a second dire bat rider to fly to Ched Nasad to repeat the recall order. She needed reinforcements.

Panic was everywhere with claims of fighting at the southwest corner of the city. Elisha joined a contingent reinforcing the east wall to restore order. Yet other than those blindly staggering away from there, no enemy showed.

She saw, half-blinded though she still was, three duties for herself. First, to drive out any attackers inside the city that had made it over the east wall. And, second, to regain and re-man the east wall. Third, she would return to East Prison and get the answers she needed on their attackers from the handsome and confident prisoner called “Amien”.

And he would die if she didn’t get her answers!