The detachment divided, and the horsemen forced their mounts through the dense foliage that spilled out into the road. Once past this obstacle, they encountered little underbrush beneath the thick trunks of the virgin oaks.
For a short while Trocero’s party rode in silence, their horses’ hooves soundless on the thick carpet of moldering leaves. Suddenly the forester in the lead flung up a hand, turned in his saddle, and murmured: “Men ahead, my lord. Mounted, I think.”
The troop drew together, the men tense and apprehensive, their horses motionless. Through the shadowed ranks of trees Trocero’s eyes detected a disquieting movement; his ears, a mutter of strange voices.
“Swords!” whispered the count. ”Prepare to charge, but strike not till I command. We know not whether they be friend or foe.”
Twenty swords hissed from their scabbards, as the riders eased their beasts to right or left, until they formed a line among the trees. The voices waxed louder, and a group of horsemen sprang into view beyond the rugged boles of immemorial oaks. His upraised sword a pointing finger, Trocero signaled the attack.
Weaving around the trees, the score of Poitanians rode at the strangers. In a few heartbeats they came within plain sight of them.
“Yield!” shouted Trocero, then reined his horse in blank amazement. The animal reared, eyes rolling, forelegs pawing the insubstantial air.
Five mounted men, unarmored but wearing white surcoats adorned with the black eagle of Aquilonia, paused to stare. All but one led captive creatures by cruel ropes noosed tightly about their necks. The captives—three males and a female—were no larger than half-grown children, their nakedness partly veiled by a thin coat of fawnlike, light-brown fur. Above each snub-nosed, humanoid face rose a pair of pointed ears. When their captors dropped the leashing ropes to draw their swords, and the freed creatures tried to run, Trocero saw each bore a short, furry tail, like that of a deer, white on the underside.
The leader of the Aquilonians, recovering his composure, shouted an order to his men. Instantly, they spurred their mounts and charged.
“Kill theml” cried Trocero.
As the five royalists, bending low over their horses’ necks, pounded toward the Poitanians, death rode in their grim eyes. The rebel swordsmen could not present a solid line, spread out as they were among the trees, so the Aquilonians aimed for the gaps. The leader rode at Trocero, his blade thrust outward like a lance. To right and left, the count’s men, avenging furies, rushed headlong at the foe.
There was an instant of wild confusion, raked by shouts and illumined by the white light of terror in the eyes of men flogged by the fury of their desperation. Two troopers converged upon a galloping Aquilonian, whose upraised sword whirled murderously above his tousled head. One drove his steel into the soldier’s sword arm; the other struck downward with all his might, tearing a long gash in the speeding horse’s hide. But the screaming animal pressed forward, and the man ran free.
A rebel’s sword darted past a blade that sought to slash him and sheathed six inches of its point into an eagle-emblemed middle. The lean, muscle-knotted Aquilonian leader lunged at Trocero, who parried with a clang, and the hum of steel on steel was a song of death. Then the five horses were through and away, like autumn leaves in a gale, with four of their riders. The fifth lay supine on the leaf mold of the forest floor, with a bloodstain spreading slowly across his white surcoat.
“Gremio!” shouted the count. “Take your squad and pursue! Try to capture one alive!"
Trocero turned back to the trampled turf, which bore mute testimony to the furious encounter. Spying the fallen man, he said: “Sergeant, see if that fellow lives."
As the sergeant dismounted, another trooper said: "Please, my lord, he spitted himself on my steel as he rode past. I know he’s dead.”
“He is,” nodded the sergeant, after a quick examination.
Trocero cursed. "We needed him for questioning!”
“Here’s one of their captives,” said the sergeant, kneeling beside the nude creature, flung like a discarded garment against a fallen log. "Methinks it was knocked down by a flying hoof and stunned in the melee.”
Trocero bit his underlip in thought. “It is, I do believe, a fabled satyr, whereof the countryfolk tell fearsome old-wives’ tales.”
A look of superstitious terror crossed the sergeant’s face, and he snatched back his questing hands. “What shall I do with it, sir?” he said, rising and stepping backward.
The satyr, whose wrists were bound together by a narrow thong, opened its eyes, perceived the ring of hostile mounted men, and scrambled to its feet. Trembling, it sought to run; but the sergeant, grabbing the rope that trailed from its neck, tugged and brought it down.
When it had been subdued, Trocero addressed it: “Creature, can you talk?^
“Aye," the captive said in broken Aquilonian. Talk good. Talk my tongue; talk little yours. What you do to me?”
"That’s for our general to decide,” replied Trocero.
"You no cut throat, like other men?”
"I have no wish to cut your throat. Why think you that those others so would do?”
“Others catch us for magic sacrifice.”
The count grunted, “l see. You need fear naught of that from us. But we must bring you back to camp. Have you a name?”
“Me Gola,” said the satyr in his gentle voice.
"Then, Gola, you shall ride pillion behind one of my men. Do you understand?”
The satyr looked downcast. "Me fear horse.”
"You must overcome your fear,” said Trocero, giving his sergeant a signal.
"Up you go,” said the soldier, swinging the small form aloft; and, lifting the noose from Cola’s neck, he bound the rope firmly about the satyr’s waist and that of the trooper on whose horse the creature sat.
"You'll be quite safe,” he laughed. Swinging into his saddle, he turned the column around.
The squad sent in pursuit of the royalists arrived at the base of the Giant’s Notch in time to see the fugitives disappear up the steep tunnel of the gorge. Fearing ambush, the Poitanians pressed the pursuit no further.
Later, in the command tent, Trocero reported on his mission to the assembled leaders of the rebellion. Conan surveyed the captive and said: "That binding on your wrists seems tight, friend Cola, We need it not”
He drew his dagger and approached the satyr, who cringed and screamed in mortal terror: “No cut throat! Man promise, no cut throat!”
“Forget your precious throat!" growled Conan, seizing the captive’s wrists in one gigantic hand. “I would not harm you.” He slashed the thong and sheathed his poinard, while Gola flexed his fingers and winced at the pain of returning circulation.
“That’s better, eh?” said Conan, seating himself at the trestle table and beckoning the satyr to join him. "Do you like wine, Gola?”
The satyr smiled and nodded; and Conan signaled to his squire.
“General!” exclaimed Publius, holding up a finger to stay the execution of the order. “Our wine is nearly gone. A few flagons more and we’re all back on beer.”
“No matter,” said Conan. “Wine we shall have. The Nemedians have a saying: 'In wine is truth,’ and this I am about to test.”
Publius, Trocero, and Prospero exchanged glances. Since he first clapped eyes upon the satyr, Conan displayed a curious affinity for this subhuman being. It was as if, a scarce-tamed creature of the wild himself, he felt instinctive sympathy for another child of nature, dragged from its native haunts by civilized men whose ways and motives must be utterly incomprehensible.
Half a wineskin later, Conan discovered that two regiments of royalist cavalry held the plateau above the Imirian Escarpment. They were encamped, not at the cliff-top where they could attack if the rebels ascended the flume of the Giant’s Notch, but several bowshots—perhaps a quarter-league—back from the edge. And for several days royalist hunting parties had clambered down the Notch to sweep the neighboring woods for satyrs. Those they caught, they dragged alive back to their camp and penned them, still bound, in a stockade built for the purpose.