Scorched Ground – Chapter 51

Satyrs are vile nasty creatures.

Do not believe what you may have read in Greek mythology about them.  They are not the little half-goat pipers that have short clipped beards, small knobby horns, an impish grin and a propensity to trot and skip around a campfire prancing about like a little ninny.  There are similar elements of these traits that are true, but the parallel similarities fork drastically on some points.  Satyrs are vicious, conniving little snots that, as a rite of passage, file their teeth to jagged needle points so that they can bite and tear flesh easier, making that “impish grin” all the more creepier.  They are hairy, unwashed and stink as if they have soiled themselves and allowed the result to collect in the shaggy mess all down their backsides.  Their beards are wooly and unkempt, lice-ridden, not at all trimmed and combed.  They are drawn to fire and do frequent campfires, snatching coals and charred branches, with which they mark themselves so that the upper half of their bodies are coated in ash and soot.  They are wild and savage and vulgar creatures, given to debauchery, and fermented drink, if they can steal it.  They are six-fingered thieves, for their hands almost always have that number of digits, unless they have met with misfortune or severe punishment.  And they have a great fondness for dogs.  Not keeping them, or playing with them…Eating them.  They take great sport in killing a dog.

Satyrs, like goats, are both climbers and jumpers, vaulting and scaling great crags, making their habitat in both forests and high mountain caves alike.  They are very fast, and over short distances, may even equal the speed of a horse in full gallop, but they cannot sustain a longer run.  The nails of their hands are grimy and dirty, often unusually long and thick.  They haunt forests, often playing tricks on wayward travelers in particularly dark wooded stretches, marauding and injuring their horses.  As I said, mean little snots.

Like trolls, these are not to be trifled with.  They are not cute forest creatures and are not natural to this or any land.  If you have the opportunity to dispatch one to its eternal consequences, don’t hesitate to do so.  If the opportunities are reversed, these will have no reservations or compunctions to return the favor, unless they are of a mind and mood to torment you first.  They are not the fauns of Narnia.  These are cousins to The Pan.  Not near as big as he, but every bit as vile, though less cloaked in the semblance of ancient intellect.

These are the things you need to know before we encounter satyrs.  I had hoped we would be spared dealing with them until we reached the stone passes, but they have been known to extend their hunting grounds into the forests, especially if they pick up the scents of dogs or any canine species, wolves, coyotes or even foxes.

Oddly enough, these beings do appear in a reference within the Ancient Text, though the word varies from translation to translation.

14 The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there and find for herself a place of rest. [Isaiah 34:14 KJV]

The Hebrew term used in reference to these creatures is śě’îrîm, (שָׂעִיר in Hebrew), often translated as “he-goat”, but sometimes refer to demons in the forms of goats.  The One forbade his people from making sacrificial offerings to them in Leviticus 17:7 and in 2 Chronicles 11:15 there is mention of a special cult established for the śě’îrîm of Jeroboam I.

There is only one natural-born enemy here in the Mid-World to the satyrs who have invaded this land.  Some beings that these beast-men cannot abide and fear.  It is one reason why I am further surprised to see these coming this far into the forests.

Maeven rose and looked at me questioningly.  Not because she did not know what I was referring to but wondered if it was time to reveal these other creatures.

Both Begglar and Nell also knew to what beings I had alluded to, in fact, we had seen such from a distance on the edge of the forest before the burnt Manticore crashed through the brush and entered the basin lake below the Trathorn Falls.

The strange lights dancing on the edge of the forest.

[Prior reference in “Chapter 33: The Manticore and the Moon Sprites”, Word search the “sparkles of light” appearing along the edge of the dark wood, near where the Manticore entered the lake.]

***

Grum-blud held the jagged blade roughly under Will’s neck, drawing a slight nicking cut enough to prick Will’s skin and form beads of blood on the blade.

“Make a peep, boy.” he growled taunting him, “Peep, peep!  Oh, please make a peep!”

Will stiffened, closing his eyes, trying desperately not to cry out.  Fear sent ice pumping through his veins, even though the Troll’s foul breath was hot and steamy on his cheek, its crowding stocky body and coarse, muscled hide also exuding body heat and the pungent smell of scorched flesh and burnt hair, and the smell of smelted tar.  This creature, holding him, pinning his arms back with a rough forearm and clenched fist full of his hair, smelled like burning radial tires.

“That your company? Your friends?” the Troll asked.

“No,” Will croaked barely about a whisper.

“What say, boy?!”

“No.  They are not my friends.”

“Not yer friends, ay?” the Troll twisted his hair tighter in his meaty fist, causing Will to gasp in pain.

“Well, them’s the ones that torched my brother, and you’d better hope you’re not in league with them.  But, I’ll give you a chance to prove it to me soon enough.  Someone’s gonna bleed for it.  And I don’t care particularly much if it’s you or one of them.  Perhaps that little girlie there, what do you think about that?  The pretty, pretty’ll squeal like a stuck pig.”

Will stiffened despite the knife.

“Do you have a name, boyo?” Grum-blud said, as he pulled the cold blade back from his neck, releasing his hair, and snaked a scalded, redraw forearm, that had once been covered with thick black hair and some blackish substance, around gripping his wrist, turning it and shoving it back behind Will’s back.  The bloody spritzed blade, now tucked away, the troll man-handled Will, pulling both hands behind him, tying his arms together with some coarse fibered rope, pulled painfully taut.

“Speak up!” the troll barked, jerking Will up shakily to his feet.

“Will,” he whispered.

“Will what?” the troll pressed.

“Just Will,” the boy responded, slightly louder.

“Okay, boyo!” the troll hissed, shoving him forward, “My name’s Grum-blud.  And Grum-blud WILL be the one you will last see before you die if you do not do exactly as Grum-blud says when Grum-blud says to.  Got it?”

He waited for an answer and slapped hard at the boy when it was not forthcoming.

“Got it?!”

“Alright,” Will responded, “I got it.”

“What is this?!” one of the Onocentaurs asked, as Grum-blud emerged from the brush, forcibly shoving the bound young man in front of him as the end of his blade.  “We can’t carry this boy and your packs, troll?!  Are you mad?  It is enough of an indignity that we let you straddle your fat bottom upon our backs.  Why didn’t you just kill this lump and let us return back?”

“Because you don’t show up to The Pan, telling him that all twenty-six of his Manticore sentries are dead and burnt to terns, that your mission to slaughter those remnant rebels in Azragoth failed, even if you are burnt like this, without something to show for it.  Might as well gut yourself with your own blade, rather than suffer what they’ll do to you before you die.  This outworlder is a trophy, a bargaining chip and something that will ensure I’m not given to the satyrs for their sport.”

“Satyrs are just nasty,” the other Onocentaur joined.  “We just carried the packs and transported the troll, Dob” he said to the other, as if Grum-blud were not present, “The Pan’s not gonna hold us responsible for this failure, is he?”

“Of course not,” the Onocentaur named Dob, rejoined, “If this pudge couldn’t get the job done with sixteen Mants, how is that our responsibility?  We did our job, Bunt, even if he failed miserably at his.”

“You really are an Ass!” Grum-blud growled, “Now shut up, you two or you’ll give away our position with all your mouthy whining.  There are a band of outworlders close-by on the road ahead that may come looking for this piece of trash, and no telling what they’ll do to your half-ass carcasses if they catch us.”

“You mean we aren’t taking the road?” the Ono called Bunt whined, “My hooves hurt.  The trails have roots sticking out across them and it is too easy to catch one and stumble.”

“Step over them,” Grum-blud hissed, “Now be quiet!”

“Easy for you to say, two-footer!” Bunt retorted, still not lowering his voice, “What you got in these packs?  Rocks?”

“Mule meat!” Grum-blud cuffed him, “Now shut up!”

“I like the Other troll better,” Bunt groused one last time, but then kept his mouth shut, wincing as once more Grum-blud raised a threatening hand.

***

Shellberd, the other Troll, who had been supposedly minding the onocentaurs in the fore-woods descending down from the hidden city of Azragoth, found himself in a hot mess.  Literally.

He had climbed a tree to get a look at the goings-on as Grum-blud has proceeded towards leading the direct assault on the dead city of Azragoth.  He had intended to watch the battle from a safe distance and imagined the shouts that would come as the Manticores vaulted the walls and descended upon the city, bringing the wrath of The Pan down upon them.  That was his plan anyway…before he fell asleep, cradled in the boughs of the tree.  His head had eventually lolled back and he found a crook in the branches where he could get more comfortable while he waited for the show to begin.  Only the wait was a long time in coming, and he and Grum-blud had traveled a lot overland, and then he had been sent alone to ask for help from The Pan.  Grum-blud knew The Pan terrified him.  That he was so scared he’d peed himself the last time they went to have an audience with The Pan.  And he knew that was precisely why Grum-blud had sent him alone.  Grum-blud liked making others suffer.  He did in some ways, but not near to the extent that Grum-blud did.  And in the waiting, he fell asleep.  And he snored.  Loudly.  There was no hiding his position, when his grunts and loud, protracted snorts echoed and buzzed through the treetops.

He awoke suddenly with a start, as sparks of light wafted by him, dancing on a very hot wind.  His startled jerk almost made him fall from the tree, for he had forgotten where he was, and the disorientation confused him.

“Faeries!” he jerked and trembled, mistaking the wafting rain of drifting sparks for something that filled him with far greater dread than he’d ever experienced before The Pan.

His feet dangled, and his chubby butt slipped out of the fork, and frantically he hooked a stubby forearm around a branch to keep from crashing down through the boughs below.  His eyes turned towards the area where the old city lay, and his face winced at the orange flashes and a wall of fire, blackening the skeletal trees, headed his way.  The city of Azragoth was afire.

It looked like Grum-blud’s plan had gone well.  ‘Yay, for him!’ Shellberd thought, as an ember took light and started burning in the dry branches and leaves above him.  He jerked his head upward, eyes widening in the glow of the firelight, now spreading through the treetop.  “Oh, poop!” he groaned, as a flaming branch broke above his head and began to descend downward, towards the very limb he dangled from.

He dropped about five feet down, smacking a lower bough, bouncing and rebounding from it before toppling in a barrel roll down to the next one.  Each impact caused him to grunt and cough as if he barked all the way down in his fall with every strike.

The onocentaurs were nowhere to be found, he noticed as he caught himself, upon a lower branch, wincing from the hard strikes from the plummet.  Grum-blud was gonna be mad, he knew, but the fire rain was coming further and further down the tree, and he had to get ahead of it and away through the forest if at all possible, or Grum-blud’s ire would have its only vent if Grum-blud ever found his body after the conflagration and kicked repeatedly and frustratedly at his fire-blackened corpse.

“Damn the donkeys, and damn Grum-blud too!” Shellberd hollered, as he crunched downward upon the scorched ground, dancing over the licking flames, hopping in puffs of hot ash, and smoke, as he ran through the forest, as fast as his short stumpy legs, and scalded, groping knuckles could carry him.

***

Azragoth was awash in golden light and rapid activity.  The archers upon the secondary wall gangplank walk scanned the flame scorched horizon, as the fire continued to burn along the leading edge of the inner walls and in the oil troughs along the ramparts.  The tower turrets had been doused and drenched with large barrels of water, and large sacks of sand had been stored within to soak up and smother the oil fires, with the water used to reduce the chances of floating embers burning the dry timber substructures holding the stone works in place.  The heat shimmer and thermal wind made seeing down into the fronting forest difficult but not impossible.  The outer courtyards of the killing fields and the dead zones of the city had burst into flame, peeling back over twenty years of uncheck wild growth in a matter of minutes, leaving the charred bones of the old city bare again with a rage of smoke twisted scrub, smoldering mats of crisping vines disintegrating under the angry curls of flame.  Grey smoke raised a cloudy wall both within and without, roiling over the outer walls, boiling orange and yellow and red in the tops of trees and dropping ash and floating sparks and twisted embers, allowing them to rise upon the downward pushing wind weaving into the woods, igniting the fallen pine needles, bursting pine cones with loud pops, and breaking branches, baring them and coloring them grey and black with the ash and smoke.

Mattox and his horsemen retinue rode within the city walls, receiving feedback and intelligence from the men and women watching down from the walls.  The Manticores had been successfully routed and, considering how thoroughly they had been coated in pitch, they had most likely perished, but they had to be certain.  Reprisals would be swift and violent, and in numbers that would require planning.

His men had counted twenty-six total Manticores during the assault on the walls, and all but one had fled enflamed outside of the curtain wall and into the forest.  One had fallen and been entangled in the mats of vines and had been trapped within the killing field by the fire spreading around it.  Its immolation had been terrible but brief before it succumbed to the smoke and descended into the resulting bonfire.  The others had streaked through the forests, setting the woods on fire in each direction, so that their progress in flight was tracked and marked by trails of fire until they ultimately fell.

Only one had gotten further than the flames of the forest, as it had less of the pitch coating its body.  The watchers could not be sure if that one survived, but if so, it would soon report back to The Pan that whatever designs it had had for the total destruction of Azragoth had failed.  The two trolls were, at present, unaccounted for.  The one Manticore that had not been counted among the confirmed dead had been the one wearing a rope collar, so it was assumed that the Troll responsible for collaring the Manticore, must have attempted to flee upon the Manticore’s back, with the collar used as a makeshift halter.

The two onocentaurs were nowhere to be found either, so they must have fled before the fires reached them.  The woods now smoking with the conflagration were too hot to venture into after the unaccounted.  Live flames still licked and flared from blacked and whitening branches devoid of leaves.  The ground smoked with ash and black soot, red and orange embers dotting the scorched landscape through a haze of dust red and black smoke.  It would perhaps be days or weeks before the area would be safe enough to ride iron-shod horses through them.  The old road might be stripped of enough weathered grasses by the fires to finally reveal the age-old wheel ruts that wound up through the fire path to the broken portcullis gate of the city’s Barbican, but at least for the moment, no one, friend or foe, would be venturing up towards the fiery city.

***

Nem surveyed the city’s defensive response from the upper terraces, sighting Mattox and his core retinue’s progress as they moved from street to street along the inner wall.  As Mattox and his riders came to the southeastern end of the firewall, Nem witnessed The Eagle ride to the archer posted there to receive word about the sector he monitored from his vantage point along the wall.  He saw the archer turn from the Barbican and approach the general, suddenly raise his bow and shoot him in the chest, before the attendant retinue could respond or prevent it.