No One's Chosen (77 page)

Rianaire entered the Bastion's main hall and the
gathered highborn elves followed. Gadaí was waiting in the middle
of the hall and Rianaire rushed to her to give the satyr a hug.

"A pleasure seeing you, Treorai." Her voice was as
shrill as ever but Rianaire found it endearing. She squeezed the
satyr tight and then pulled away.

"I shall need to speak with you later. About a
private matter."

Long tables lined the edges of the main walk of the
hall and at the far end was a smaller front facing table that had
been meant to hold Rianaire and her Binse. She patted Gadaí on the
arm and pulled her around.

"Join me," the Treorai said.

She took Gadaí and placed her at the table on the
other side of Inney who sat at her right and Síocháin at her left.
The dinner was to be some obscene number of courses. Ten or twenty
or some mad thing. Rianaire raised a toast to the tenacity of
Spéirbaile and so the feasting began. The music began to play and
the trays of food were brought one after the other. Meats and
cheeses and breads and dishes from the desert lands and the river
lands. Rianaire had even prepared a chef who swore he knew the
foods of the horsefolk. When the meal was sat down in front of
Gadaí, the satyr gasped in surprise. The dish was rich with a small
grain like rice and fish. It was made with sour milk and
saffron.

"I ought to have been eating the food of the
hippocamps more often."

Gadaí laughed. "Ah, but it is not quite right."

"Oh?"

"The meat is far too fresh."

They both laughed at that. During the first of the
intermissions from the massive meal, patrons came to pay thanks
and, more importantly, to beg Rianaire for favors. Many were apt to
angle for positions in her new Binse. Rianaire watched them all
closely and not one who passed could keep their eyes from Gadaí and
their expressions from concern or disgust or anger. A single artist
among the guests, a waif thin man from the south who had done a
dozen portraits for Rianaire, lifted the satyr's hand and kissed it
gently, bowing.

"I am disappointed," Rianaire said when the rich
beggars had gone.

"They see all hoofed as of a kind. It is common. I
put sword to more than I am proud to say when they did not hear my
words."

As the food became too much, many of the elves took
to the center of the hall to dance. Rianaire declined and kept her
seat. She had played her part and now it was time that she would
sit and watch others swing themselves around. There was a form of
happiness in that as well. Seeing the joy on the faces of others
and hearing the noises of the folk outside.

Rianaire excused herself to make for the privy
sometime around the fifteenth course.

"It must have been twenty after all," she thought,
walking the halls to the toilet.

Quick footsteps sounded behind her in the hall and
Rianaire spun to see Mion coming toward her. He was dressed in a
dull orange dress that hugged his figure tightly enough to show the
ridge of the head of his cock.

"It is about time I found you alone, lover. I thought
you'd never leave that damned room." His tone was breathless,
impatient. His face was serious.

Rianaire smiled at him. "If it was a fuck you wanted,
you needed only to come and whisper it in my ear, Mion. I've been
too long without anything firm and hot inside of me."

She grabbed at his cock and felt the warmth of it
through the thin dress.

"I'd hardly call you ready for our rendezvous, Mion."
She sighed, fondling his manhood over the fabric. "I suppose it's
just as well. I'd like to have pissed if you'd entered me before
I—"

He pushed her hand away from his crotch and grabbed
her by the shoulders. "Lover, I am not here for pleasure." He
looked her dead in the eyes.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What do you mean?"

He pulled his hands away and reached into the orange
dress, pulling free a pure white piece of paper. "A marmar
arrived."

Rianaire pulled the paper away from him. "And for
that you…" Her words fell away as she read over the paper.

She forced it back against Mion's chest and walked
past him down the hall as quickly as her legs would carry her in
the weighty dress. She moved into the main hall and up onto her
dais. She looked out over the hall and the music ceased as the
gathered elves cast their eyes in her direction.

"The feast is done!" There was a muttering among the
guests when she said the words.

"Order the city guard to close and bar the gates and
make ready the barricades." She said the words with a tone of grave
importance. The murmur of the crowd grew louder and more
confused.

She took a deep breath and looked over the room.
Finally, she said the words she had read in Mion's paper.

"A horde has crossed the border and now makes for the
Bastion City."

There are three races among the Hippocamps: The
centaur, the satyr, and the faun. In the time before the Endless
War began, they lived separately on the vast plains and river lands
of the Southern Lands.

The Centaur

Centaur are the largest of the horsefolk, with large,
equine trunks trailing behind their elvish upper torso. They have
pointed ears and are generally quite hairy, even the women. The
tallest of them reach over nine feet in height and they can weigh
nearly two tons at the heaviest. They are an incredibly powerful
race and many among their number have rudimentary control over
earth magic.

The centaur currently rule the hordes in a
clandestine manner. There is a loose central structure governed by
the collective Warlords who stand at the head of each horde. While
there is little in the way of diplomatic action, the central
structure serves as a way to bolster hordes should the non-centaur
races run low. There is a sort of egalitarianism concerning the
spreading around of satyr and faun. Warlords are determined by
battle prowess and conquest. There are very few hordes north of the
isthmus connecting the Southern Lands to the realm of the elves.
South of the divide, there are dozens of hordes and they often
fight among themselves and battle rebellious satyr folk who still
live freely in the dense, wet jungles of the far south.

The drive for conquest and battle is core to the
centaur religion, believing in a series of fallen gods who trampled
mountains flat in massive, undying battles. When the old Warlords
had trampled the entire southern world flat, they leapt to the sky
to flatten the clouds. Battle is eternal and is the ultimate
measure of an individual among the centaur. This is a core part of
their usage of the satyr as scouting parties, in fact. The centaur
believe that they are honoring the satyr and attempting to raise
them up to more than they are by using them as fighting forces. It
is the greatest glory the satyr are ever like to experience.

The Satyr

Satyr are tall, wiry horsefolk with smooth hair over
their legs that gives way toward the torso. They have black eyes
and pointed ears. Most satyr stand above elves, averaging seven and
a half feet in height with many breaching above eight. Though they
are quite tall, they are thin and muscular with powerful legs.

The satyr, before being conquered and forced into
service by the centaur, were a musical culture. This culture still
exists in the far south where they have been forced into larger
cities as a means of survival against the hordes. The satyr culture
of old saw music as a basic right of the people and the sharing of
songs was highly encouraged as a way of bonding among groups. Many
cultures saw the value of a marriage partner by way of their
lyrical or musical ability. The best songwriters were often
considered to be among the wisest of their people and the most well
traveled.

In stark contrast to the centaur who keep violent
harems, satyr tribes have practiced monogamy so long as records
have been kept. They were largely a peaceful race, though not for
lack of battle prowess. Their hunting culture was well developed
and served them well against the mercilessly straight-forward
centaur. It did not serve well enough, however, for those unwilling
to leave the northern areas and they were eventually overwhelmed.
Most satyr do what they can to keep their culture alive under
centaur rule but any deviation from the centaur way of life is met
with brutal retaliation.

The Faun

The elves know little of the faun as they were a race
from the far reaches of the Southern Lands. They are similar to the
Satyr in appearance though they are much shorter, averaging around
four and a half feet in height, and their eyes are black with
colored irises.

Even among the hippocamps, there is little that is
truly known about the Faun. They live in burrows and caves among
the rolling hills of the southwestern part of the Southern Lands.
For the bulk of their history, the faun kept strictly to these
tunneled cities. They appear amongst the centaur hordes in smaller
numbers than any of the other two races but excel at diplomacy and
arranging for meetings with the other races.

The faun are not well respected among the hordes, and
they are seen as having little use due to their poor performance in
battle, but they are still kept among nearly every horde in small
numbers. They are quick to learn languages and are the only among
the hippocamps who have any system of writing. As such, they are
kept among the camps to chronicle the triumphs of the centaur for
future ages. This decision is not always a popular one among
centaur, as they feel there is no glory but in battle and books are
not battle. Still, none among the Warlords has ever denied the faun
their place.

It was fifteen thousand years ago that the Endless
War began with the centaur crossing the isthmus from the South
Lands into the elven provinces. The old stories tell that the
ancient elves had been pushed to the edge of their lands and were
on the brink of certain destruction when the Four Sisters appeared.
They rallied the elves and organized them, uniting all of the elven
lands for a time. The provinces were not so well defined then and
cities were small and often at odds with one another over petty
tribal squabbles. The Sisters rectified this.

It is said that during this time, the Drow lived
freely among the elves and it wasn't until the hordes were pushed
back across the isthmus that the provinces were properly
established. Each Sister claimed a corner of the elven lands and
built a Bastion to serve as a base of power.

Still, the war did not end there. Indeed it continues
even now. The vast sandy expanse that is the White Waste south of
Fásachbaile plays host to at least one large horde and possibly
others. The area around the isthmus is controlled by the centaur
and they still make attacks northward when they see it fit. Across
the span of the war, there has been an ebb and flow in control of
the southern parts of the elven lands. As a result, few cities
exist far south in the Abhainnbaile and Fásachbaile provinces and
these lands play host to most of the battles between the warring
races. Though, of late, the centaur have been growing quite
bold.

The wind was blistering and drove the snow to a speed
that stung Aile's face when it hit. The Drow was wrapped in thick
furs from head to toe. She looked up occasionally to check where
she was. The maps of the area that she could find were all
centuries old and neither could she find a person who had ventured
to the north. It was all ruined cities, they say, and they had not
lied.

She would not have even come north were it not for a
crudely drawn map in one of Spárálaí's many houses. She had
explored each of them thoroughly, at least those outside of the
Bastion City. She had three deeds other than the hotel she'd burned
that she had not been able to return to the city to inspect. Well,
she may have been able to, but word was that the Treorai had become
happy for removing heads and she did not intend to see to it that
hers was one that might see the block.

It was a small house not far from Creid, the northern
woods, that gave her the map. An unassuming place to look at it
from the outside, but well kept. Inside it was luxurious and rife
with coin and trophies from around the provinces. There had even
been a small stone from Fásachbaile which she imagined he might've
acquired when they first met. Or perhaps when he hired her to carry
out his unsightly tasks.

Much of the furniture in the small cabin was covered
with gemstones. The Binseman clearly had a deep love of the ornate
and overdone. It suited the sour faced elf, she thought. A creature
obsessed with coin was likely to be obsessed with all things that
shone. There was gold trim among the seats and gold woven thread,
but it did not matter. The furniture was too heavy and gems were
common and worth very little. She took what she could carry and
burned the place.

The map had not been done in
Spárálaí's own hand. She had become quite familiar with his swoopy,
florid writing in her trips to his many homes and this was the
first of the documents, other than letters, that had not been in
his own hand. The word
ennoil
was written on the back of the paper. It was a
word in the Drow tongue that indicated something precious. There
was only the roughest drawing of some landmarks on the map and an X
that had been circled in a different color of ink.