The boy woke up to a surprise.
A hand had shaken him. “Wake up, little one.”
The boy’s eyes opened. Amien was leaning over him with his elf lantern cracked on just enough to see him by.
“You’re alive!” the boy gasped in surprise.
“Indeed, I am. I do not remember what happened, though. I woke up to find myself high up in these rocks and you asleep beside me.”
“You took a drow sleep dart,” said the boy. “I dragged you up here.”
“How much time has gone by?”
“I do not know. I fell asleep myself. Is the enemy about?”
“I have seen, nor heard, nothing,” said Amien. “Unless I miss my guess, the enemy has advanced up the road past us. If we hurry, we can follow them.”
“No,” the boy stopped him. “We can’t! A dire bat and its rider picked up young Joe and carried him off the other way. You hit it with your knife, remember?”
"That I don't remember, but my knife is gone. So, why would a dire bat rider use a sleep dart on me instead of poison?"
"To capture you and make you a slave."
"They can do that?"
"They can and do. Plus they would also mate you with orc women to create man-orcs."
"In that event, I would much prefer death. So? Are you suggesting we follow a bat?” asked Amien. “For we cannot track what flies.”
“What if it bleeds?”
“Depends upon how much.”
“I hit it. So did you. But I don’t know how badly.”
“If you speared it with your blade,” noted the man, “then it bleeds badly, and can be followed.”
The boy shivered at the thought of young Joe being a drow slave forever. He had to rescue him!
Amien considered the problem of how to track it, “Show me where we were when we hit it.”
They both cracked on their lanterns and started down the slope, wary of the enemy. But there was no sound, nor any trace of them. They were alone. The enemy had long since passed.
When shown the spot where the bat caught young Joe. Amien looked the area over.
“Your spear is not anywhere to be found,” he noted. “It must still be in the beast. Tell me? Are these dire bats of black blood or red?”
“I do not know. Probably red if they can be tamed.”
"We shall find out it bleeds soon enough. Which way did it fly?”
“That way,” pointed the boy.
“Towards Mills Breath,” said the man. “Lead the way.”
They found both Amien’s sword and the boy’s other spear in two dead Man-orcs along the way.
“You killed many,” noted Amien as the boy recovered them. “These spears do fine work.”
They climbed down to the road, still littered with dead orcs, and Amien frowned at the massacre.
"We cannot track it by its blood over this road. Too much man-orc blood already covers it. But a dire bat does not need to follow a road. It will fly a straight line. That means we must walk a straight line too which means we must leave this road."
They climbed down the other side of the road towards the bottom below.
“Keep your eye upon the rocks,” said Amien. “Watch for blood. Do not walk too straight a line. It will slow you down in these rocks. Follow the path of least resistance. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. We look for blood or your spear.”
"How will we know it isn't man-orc blood?"
"Because," answered Amien. "If that were the case you'd find a dead man-orc along with it."
For a long time, they searched the area separately before meeting again.
“There is little to be found here,” said Amien. “We must go further down, and spread out in a circle. Again, keep a sharp eye out.”
The boy spread out his fingers on his spear, feeling the smooth texture beneath them as he scanned the terrain. The jagged edges of the limestone formations jutted out around him, hiding whatever was behind them from the dim light of his elf lantern. Each step felt uncertain as he navigated the uneven ground, his heart pounding with a mixture of fear to go forward and fear to go back. Every sound seemed amplified in the silence of the night, heightening his senses as he strained to catch any sign of movement.
After a long search, he spotted Amien ahead. He had stooped to look down.
“Blood,” he said.
The boy hurried over to have a look. “Red blood,” he noted.
“Yes. This amount means it will not heal easily,” said Amien. “Your aim was true.”
“You hit it too with your dagger. Or you hit something. It cried out when hit.”
Amien shrugged.
“Good for me,” he said, standing up to estimate the creature’s line of flight. “It flew this way,” he pointed ahead.
Amien moved quickly, jumping over rocks now that he had found its trail. Soon, he was kneeling again.
“More blood,” he said. “It flies for Mills Breath.”
“Is it not dangerous for us to approach Mills Breath with our elf lanterns lit?”
“Probably,” agreed Amien, “But we shall not be able to follow the trail without them. Besides! We have left the road, and this is a very rough country. It is as difficult for them to reach us as it is for us to reach them.”
“But they could send a dire bat out after us,” said the boy.
“Or an army of man-orcs,” stated Amien. “So, do we give up and go back, or keep going? It is your decision.”
The boy was convinced certain death awaited them. The quantity of the enemy he had seen was too vast to be real. He had never seen as much as five tens of persons in one mass before, and he was like all boys of his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references to “ten tens” and “anthills” were mere fanciful forms of speech and that no such amounts really existed in the entire world. If anyone had ever analyzed his notions of armies, they would have been found to consist of a handful of neighbor boys playing with sticks for swords in meadows and fields.
So, to the boy, this was all a bad dream or, at least, he wished it were all a bad dream because then, if it were, at least he would wake up from it. To deliberately head towards Mills Breath was an invitation to wake up dead. They’d be seen with their lights approaching and the enemy kill them for sure.
“Do you suppose it made it all the way back to Mills Breath?” he asked.
“Your aim was true but for how far it flew? That could be quite a way.”
“I don’t want to go all the way there.”
“I will if you don’t want to. Young Joe is my captain.”
The boy didn’t know which was worse. Going all the way to Mills Breath or being left alone halfway to it out here.
“Well! I’ll go as far as you will,” he decided.
They spread out and followed along the rocks using their lights. This time they got further apart. Suddenly, Amien’s light stopped but not to kneel over a trail of blood. Instead, he gazed ahead.
The boy turned curiously at this. In his uneasiness, he drew closer and closer to the spot where Amien’s light stood still; fearing all sorts of dreadful things. Every moment, he expected some catastrophe to happen that would take away his breath. There was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the way it was beating. Suddenly there was a flash of an elf's light in the boy’s eyes as Amien turned and came tearing by him. The boy could see the fear in the man’s eyes, and it mirrored his own :
“Run!” cried Amien. “Run for your life!”
He needn’t have repeated it; once was enough; the boy was making thirty or forty miles an hour in an instant. He passed Amien running through the limestone stalactites and stalagmites around them. The two only stopped when Amien realized they weren’t being chased. The boy came back and caught his breath.
“What was it?” he gasped, his heart pounding. “What did you see?”
“One of your dire bats,” said Amien.
“Was it after us? Did it see us?”
“I don’t know. I thought it did,” said Amien, drawing his sword. “Let’s go back and find out.”
“Go back? Whatever for?”
“Because this bat wasn’t flying,” said the man.
“That doesn’t mean anything! They do land. They even hang upside down.”
“Maybe,” said the man, still starting back.
“So, what was it doing?”
“It was looking at me.”
“No!”
“It was lying there, watching me with his wings spread out.”
“What did it do? Did it get up?”
“Look!” said the man in reply. “There it is!”
It was there all right, staring right at them. The boy stopped in his tracks, but Amien moved closer. The boy could see the saddle on its back. Yet where was its rider?
The boy wouldn’t take another step towards that thing, expecting it to rise up and do battle with them any second. It had fangs and claws—even its great leathery wings had claws!
Yet Amien bravely drew closer and closer to the thing until he was right up next to its red eyes, sword poised and ready...
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