"My folk move from Notch," said Gola, sadly. “Had no pipes ready.”
Ignoring that strange remark, Conan asked: “How know you that they plan to use your peoples’ blood for magical sacrifices?”
The satyr gave Conan a sly, sidelong glance. “We know. We, too, have magic. Big magician on cliffs above.”
Conan pondered, studying the small creature intently. “Gola, if we push the bad men from the upper plain, you need no longer fear mistreatment. If you help us, we will restore your woods to you.”
“How know I what big men do? Big men kill our people.”
“Nay, we are your friends. See, you are free to go." Conan pointed to the tent flap, arms spread wide.
A glow of childlike joy suffused the satyr’s face. Conan waited for the glow to fade, then said: “Now that we’ve saved some of your folk from the wizard’s cauldron, we may ask help from you. How can I reach you?”
Gola showed Conan a small tube made of bone that was suspended from a vine entwined about his neck. “Go in woods and blow.” The satyr put the whistle to his lips and puffed his cheeks.
“I hear no sound,” said Conan.
“Nay, but satyr hear. You take.”
Conan stared at the tiny whistle as it lay in his huge palm, while the others frowned, thinking the bit of bone a useless toy intended to cozen their general. Presently, Conan slipped the whistle into his pouch, saying gravely: “I thank you, little friend.” Then calling his squires and the nearest sentry, he said: “Escort Gola into the woods beyond the camp. Let none molest him—some of our superstitious soldiers might deem him an embodied evil spirit and take a cut at him. Farewell.”
When the satyr had departed, Conan addressed his comrades: “Numitor lies beyond the Notch, waiting for us to climb the slope ere he signals attack! What make you of it?^
Prospero shrugged. “Meseems he relies much on that 'big magician’—the king’s sorcerer, I have no doubt."
Trocero shook his head. “More likely, he’s fain to give us a clear path to the top, so that we can face him on equal terms. He is a well-meaning gentleman who thinks to fight a war by rules of chivalry.”
“He must know we outnumber him," said Publius, perplexed.
“Aye,” retorted Trocero, "but his troops are Aquilonia’s best, whereas half our motley horde are babes playing at warfare. So he relies on dash and discipline… .”
The argument was long and inconclusive. As twilight deepened into night, Conan banged his goblet on the table. “We cannot sit below the cliffs for day, attempting to read Numitor’s mind. Tomorrow we shall scale the Giant’s Notch, prepared for instant action.”
SATYRS BLOOD
Prince Numitor paced restlessly about the royalist camp. The cooking fires were dying down, and the regiments of Royal Frontiersmen had turned in for the night The new moon set, and in the gathering darkness the stars wheeled slowly westward like diamonds stitched upon the night-blue cloak of a dancing girl. To the west, where twilight lingered, the dodging shape of a foraging bat besmudged the horizon, while overhead the clap of a nightjar’s wings shattered the silence.
The prince passed the line of sentries and strolled toward the edge of the escarpment, where Thulandra Thuu had placed things needful for his magic. Behind him the camp vanished into forest-shadowed darkness. Ahead the precipice fell sharply away. And leftward yawned the black canyon that was called the Giant’s Notch.
Although the prince’s placid ears picked up no sound of movement in the gorge, something about the camp’s location disturbed him; but for a time he could not put a finger on the source of his unease.
After walking several bowshots’ distance, Prince Numitor sighted the dancing flames of a small fire. He hastened toward it. Thulandra Thuu, hooded and cloaked in black, like some bird of ill omen, was bending over the fire, while Hsiao, on his knees, fed the blaze with twigs. A metal tripod, from the apex of which a small brazen pot was suspended by a chain, straddled the fickle fire. To one side a large copper caldron squatted in the grass.
As Numitor approached, the sorcerer moved away from the firelight and, fumbling in a leathern wallet, extracted a crystal phial. This he unstoppered, muttering an incantation in an unknown tongue, and poured the contents into the heated vessel. A sudden hissing and a plume of smoke, shot through with rainbow hues, issued from the pot.
Thulandra Thuu glanced at the prince, said a brief “Good even, my lord!" and reached again into his wallet.
“Master Thulandra!" said Numitor.
“Sir?" The sorcerer paused in his searching.
“You insisted that the camp be set far from the precipice; I wonder at your reasoning. Should the rebels steal into the Giant's Notch, they would be upon us ere they were discovered. Why not move the camp here on the morrow, where our men can readily assail the foe with missiles from above?"
The eyes beneath the sorcerer’s cowl were veiled in purple darkness, but the prince fancied that they glowed deep in that cavernous hollow, like the night eyes of beasts of prey. Thulandra purred: “My lord Prince, if the demons I unleash perform their proper function, my spell would put your men in danger should they stand where we stand now. The final stage I shall commence at midnight, a scant three hours hence. Hsiao will inform you in good time."
The magician shook more powder into the steaming pot and stirred the molten mixture with a slender silver rod. “Now I crave your pardon, good my lord, but I must ask you to stand back whilst I construct my pentacle."
Hsiao handed Thulandra Thuu the wooden staff, ornately carved, which served him as a walking stick when he stalked about the camp. While his servant piled fresh fuel upon the dying fire, the sorcerer paced off certain distances about the conflagration and marked the bare earth with the ferule of his staff. Muttering, he drew a circle, a dozen paces in diameter, then etched deep lines back and forth across the space enclosed. Following an arcane ritual, he inscribed a symbol in each angle of the pentacle. The prince understood neither the diagram nor the lettering thereon, but felt no desire to plumb the wizard’s unholy mysteries.
Now Thulandra rose up and stood beside his fire, his back to the precipice. He intoned an utterance—a prayer or incantation—in a singsong foreign tongue. Then facing east, he repeated his invocation, and in this wise completed one rotation. Numitor saw the stars grow dim and shapeless shadows flutter through the clear night air. He heard the sinister thunder of unseen beating wings. Thinking it better not to view more of the uncanny preparations of his cousin’s favorite, he stumbled back to camp. To his captains he gave orders to rouse the men an hour before midnight to comply with the sorcerer’s directions. Then he turned in.
Three hours later Hsiao spoke to a sentry, who sent another to awaken the sleeping prince. As Numitor made his way to the cliff whereon the wizard prepared his magical spell, he came upon the column of soldiers ordered by Thulandra Thuu. Each man-at-arms gripped a bound and captive satyr. A dozen of the furry forest folk whimpered and wailed as their captors brutally hustled them into line.
Hsiao had built up the fire, and the brazen pot bubbled merrily, sending a cloud of varicolored smoke into the starlit sky. Upon Thulandra’s curt command, the first soldier in the line dragged his squirming captive to the copper cauldron standing upon the grass and forced the bleating creature’s head down over the vessels rim. As the darkness throbbed to the beat of an inaudible drum—or was it the beat of the awestruck soldiers’ hearts?—the sorcerer deftly slashed the satyr’s throat. At a signal, the man-at-arms lifted the sacrificial victim by its ankles and drained its blood into the large container. Then, in obedience to a low command, he tossed the small cadaver over the precipice.