The Last Satyr: The Two Paths Part 2

Eventually, Amien and the boy tracked the wounded drow to a place where a little stream of water, trickled over a ledge and carrying limestone sediment with it. Over the ages it had formed a laced and ruffled waterfall of gleaming and imperishable stone. Amien knelt beside it, inspecting the ground for signs of their quarry. Somewhere in the shadows ahead, they both knew, a deadly game of cat and mouse was about to unfold.

“The drow stopped here, drank, and cleaned its wound,” the man said. “She knows not yet aware she’s being followed. That means she was beyond the sight of seeing our lights when she stopped here. Depending upon how long she rested, she is possibly still within our reach.”

“Any sign young Joe is with her?” asked the boy.

“No,” said the man, shaking his head and studying the ground. “This is solid rock. It leaves no footprints. But he almost certainly is with her. We’ve not come across my dagger that hit the drow, so she’s probably using it on Joe to keep him prisoner. She had to have pulled it out of herself in order to clean her wound.”

“How badly is she bleeding?”

“Not badly enough to suit us,” said Amien, straightening. “I’m afraid my aim was not as true as yours.”

“You were passing out as you threw,” said the boy. “So she could be quite a way ahead of us, then?”

“She’s limping and not hurrying,” said Amien. “Yet this blood has not yet dried. We catch up.”

They left here by a steep natural stairway, which was enclosed between two narrow walls and wound this way along the floor of the cavern. Without the road, the going was very slow. Only once did they encounter a spacious area, from whose ceiling descended a multitude of shining stalactites of the length and circumference of a man’s leg. They crossed it in wonder for its awesomeness, yet did so quickly because those at Mills Breath might see their elf lanterns.

This way led presently to a passage that opened to a bewitching spring, whose basin was incrusted with a frostwork of glittering crystals. It was in the midst of its own cavern; its ceiling supported by many fantastic pillars formed by the joining of great stalactites and stalagmites together, themselves the result of the ceaseless water-drip of centuries. Under the roof, vast knots of bats that ventured from the Three Candles had packed themselves together, thousands in a bunch. Their lights disturbed the creatures, and they came flocking out by the droves, squeaking and darting furiously at their elf lanterns. The boy knew their ways and the danger of these bats reporting on them to Lolth. It took a while to lose them. In the doing, the boy found a subterranean lake, which stretched its dim length away until disappearing in the shadows. They searched its shores for evidence the drow had drunk and washed her wounds again here and Amien found she had.

“This blood has not dried at all,” noted Amien. “The one we search is close at hand.”

The boy grew apprehensive.

“You think she hears us?”

“Right now?” considered Amien. “Who knows? But being drow, she will certainly hear us before we hear her and she will have already seen our lights.”

“What will she do now?”

“She might slit young Joe’s throat and run, or she may lie in wait and set a trap.”

“Which do you think she’ll do?”

“Slit young Joe’s throat and run,” said Amien. “But, first, she’ll want to have a look at us. Young Joe would bring a good price as a slave. The drow will only slit his throat when she’s sure of who follows her is a worthy enemy.”

“What do you suggest?”

“That we split up. She’ll be more inclined to keep Joe alive and ambush one of us instead that way. The other one of us must get behind her. That should be me. The drow will have less fear of seeing you coming towards her than me. I’ll go left. Give me time for a head start and then go straight, following this blood. Be on your guard! With only you following her, she won’t hesitate to lay a trap for you. I doubt you’ll ever even see it.”

The boy took little comfort in that but agreed. He gave a long wait after Amien left, then an even longer wait just out of scare, and then finally struck out after young Joe and the drow, white-faced with fear. That drow would see his elf lantern coming for sure. She’d see him long before he saw her.

Either that or she’d hear him. The boy’s hooves were pretty quiet on grass, but they clopped on solid rock. He was about as quiet as a horse.

He warily shined the light ahead, checking every possible hiding place for a trap. Yet he also had to watch the ground. The drow was bleeding less now, and less blood made a harder track to follow. It became impossible to study the ground and all the hiding places ahead at the same time. There were times he clopped loud enough that he stopped, expecting to hear an echo.

His elf light gem began to fade and he had to crack it again. As soon as he did so, he found a single drop of blood and tested it.

It was not only wet but warm.

“What were those drow talking about?” Ronthiel asked Leradien, of the three drow on riding lizards.

“They’ve got the wounded dwarves and satyrs still in Mills Breath,” she replied, moving down the bank after them. “Those three are to herd them to Thera Pass.”

“Didn’t they say there were only three tens of dwarves in the city?”

“That’s what they said.”

“That can’t be right! There was half an anthill, at least, when we left. What happened to the others?”

“That’s what they wanted to know, too,” answered Leradien. “I guess they all died in the retreat from Thera Pass.”

“Where are we going?” asked Ronthiel.

“After them.”

“After three lizard riders?” he gasped. “What for?”

“Because I’m hungry!” she said. “I’m a big girl you know and have to be fed! One of those riding lizards should do it. Have your bow ready. They know we’re after them. Hang on!”

The boy studied a rock in front of him. There were several drops of blood here. More than he expected. It meant the drow had stopped here, stood, and waited.

It wasn’t very hard to figure out why. From where the drow had set herself, she had been looking back on her trail. She had been here quite a while, watching—almost certainly watching the boy approach. From here, she’d have seen the boy coming easily, and from a good way off.

She hadn’t slit young Joe’s throat though when she saw the boy or Joe’s body would have been left here. That meant she wasn’t afraid of the boy and was now looking for a way to collect him too as a prisoner. A trap for the boy was being planned and planned by an expert.

The elf lantern in the boy’s hand was fading again. He cracked it on the rocks to reignite it but it barely glowed at all. They only last so long and this one now quickly dimmed and went out, leaving him now the hunted, in the horror of absolute darkness.

The three drow riders rode up to the city’s edge of Mills Breath and their great lizards turned straight up to climb the walls, for they needed no gates. Suddenly, a great black spider rushed upon them, coming right up the wall after them. The three riders had thought themselves completely safe and were not even looking back when Leradien’s claws brought her up from behind as fast as lightning and with Ronthiel's raised bow to their black outlines. Their heads turned at the faint sound of her pointed claws as she cast her fairy lights upon them for Ronthiel to aim by.

“Zip! Zip! Zip!” Sang out three arrows.

Three bodies fell from their saddles, only one with a cry, and the three lizards continued up and over the wall without their riders.

This surprised Leradien. She hadn’t touched one of the drow. Ronthiel had gotten all three!

“That’s pretty fast shooting,” she told him as he got down off her to retrieve his arrows.

“Practice,” he told her, removing them from the back of the necks of the drow. “I’m to represent my village against Draugo in the school archery competition, if you know him.”

“I know him,” she answered, climbing up the wall now to keep an eye on her planned meal of one of three riding lizards. “He’s my brother.”

And then she went over the wall after them.

Ronthiel waited for her return, finding the feeling of loneliness of her leaving to be extremely intense—more so than usual.

Did she say Draugo was her brother?

The boy stood still in the dark. It was foolish to move forward now. He could not even see his own hand before his face. The best thing he could do was stay still and make the drow come to him. He shifted his spear to his left hand and drew his long-bladed knife in his right. Leradien said it was for killing drow. He would find out soon enough. He would shout and maybe draw the drow out. So he tried it, but in the darkness, the distant echoes of his voice sounded so hideous that he tried it no more.

Ronthiel called up after Leradien to see if she was still there after going over the wall to bring a riding lizard down.

“Have you had your fill?” he whispered.

She said nothing, left the fallen lizard, and returned. Leradien was always careful not to kill that which she hunted, though she left it weak and incapacitated. It was why the Riders of the Rim had no dead cows. Yet this one only whetted her appetite for her real quarry. The only thing that would satisfy her desire now was Lolth. Big as they were, these lizards were just table scraps to Leradien compared to Lolth.

She went back and got him, let him remount her and, once again, resumed climbing the city walls, peeking over the top for sentries. Seeing none, Leradien headed straight down the other side and into the city. No one tried to stop them.

“The enemy has left the city,” she told Ronthiel with her ability to see. “There will only be a few guards and physicians attending the prisoners, probably in the keep. If they have taken the boy prisoner, he should be there.”

“What do we do?”

“Do?” she replied. “I have no plan. You were the one who wanted to come here and save the boy. I can only love one of you at a time and right now that one is you!”

“Can we attack the inner keep?”

The inner keep defended the hospital infirmary.

“We can, but we will not succeed. Dwarves do not build stone keeps for a mere drider to tear down. And arrows will not bounce off my elf woman’s body like they do my spider shell. Just one or two orcs with bows and enough arrows could bring me down from the windows before I ever got inside. If my spider demon cannot heal my wounds in time, I shall die.”

"But you're no ordinary drider."

"No. I'm not," she agreed. "So what do we do?"

“I shall have to do it alone,” said the elf.

“You? No. If you go,” said Leradien, “I go, too. But, if they fill me with more arrows than my blood can heal, then I ask only that you come back, stay with me, and hold my hand until my end.”

“I am the only one sworn to the boy,” said Ronthiel. “You need not come.”

“But I am now sworn to you,” she said. “We go together. I won't be left behind. I have your elf light to illuminate the keep. If you can kill the orc archers at the windows, I shall try to break down the keep’s door. I may not be a fire beetle but, for a drider, I’m pretty strong. I may do some damage. Stay behind me and use me as your shield. Take no arrows to protect me! The first few will not hurt me and I can use my front four legs to knock most of them aside. If you think you are as good as Draugo with a bow, then I trust your aim.”

“How many of them do you think there will be?”

“One is too many, as far as I am concerned,” Leradien replied. “But they obviously only asked for three riding lizards to march the wounded prisoners back to Thera Pass so there’s either a lot of orcs in that keep or very few prisoners. And by the way that those three drow talked back there, I’d say there were very few prisoners.”

“And very few prisoners mean very few guards.”

“Lucky for us if so. Yet unlucky for the prisoners. It means most died.”

“Let’s hope few guards, for both our sakes,” said the elf. "It is too late the dead."

“One last kiss first before we go,” Leradien asked, her eyes meeting his. “I want to at least know what your lips taste like before I die.”

Ronthiel hesitated. He had never purposefully kissed a girl, let alone a drider, before. But to kiss any woman as wondrously beautiful as Leradien would be an honor to be remembered and savored for the rest of his life. So he would not—could not—deny her. Yet when their lips touched in a warmth and passion he had never even imagined possible, a choking sensation arose in his throat, not for it being his first kiss ever, but that it might be his last. And Leradien, as only Leradien could do, had just awakened in him an intense thirst to know her young, tender lips again.

And that now seemed impossible. For ahead now, in that bolted keep with archers at the windows, lay the bodings of a deadly showdown for one or both of them. Against this fortress of doom, courage and sacrifice would be their only allies.