Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2015 09:27:26 -0400 From: George Gauthier <georgegauthierdc@gmail.com> Subject: Elf-Boy's Friends 15 Elf-Boy's Friends 15 The Troll War, Part VI of VII Explorers by George Gauthier [The further adventures of characters from the novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends'] Chapter 1. Idle Chit Chat "You know Liam, it's been nearly three months since that barbecue in the garden of the Klarendes' townhouse. I've been wondering what progress you have made in that time using Angus McFarden's training techniques to strengthen your Fetching powers." The industrialist's freight lines and street cars were powered by fetchers who had been taught introspection and visualization techniques that stretched their magical gift and nearly doubled their strength. "I am doing pretty well now Drew. I will never be able to lift a brontothere into the sky the way you can, but I can lift more than before, say a couple of ponies instead of a single full-sized horse." Drew nodded, adding: "Of course, even a much weaker fetcher can be effective in combat. It doesn't take a lot of power to yank eyeballs out of their sockets or to whirl small steel spheres with devastating effect. Where you really need raw power in naval combat is flinging ballast stones at enemy ships and the stamina to keep it up." Now maybe Axel's gift of eidetic memory made him something of a literalist or maybe just a skeptic. After listening to their exchange across the dining table he snorted and shook his head: "Has either of you ever actually lifted those animals into the sky, a horse in your case, Liam, and a brontothere in yours, Drew?" "Well, no Axel." Liam explained patiently. "Those are just expressions we fetchers use to indicate the approximate magnitude of our gifts." "Speak for yourself, Liam. I have actually Lifted a brontothere off the ground. It was years ago when I was just starting out as a reporter. I did a story on the brontothere reserve on the Eastern Plains. One of the farmers who grew vegetables for the beasts laughed at me when I used that very phrase. Just to shut him up, I showed him I could lift a brontothere off the ground though just a couple of feet." "Why not higher, literally into the sky?" "Perish the thought. Brontotheres aren't afraid of much, but like all creatures they know they are vulnerable to falls, especially with their great weight. I did not want to terrify the brontothere, just make a point. So I picked it up, spun it around and set it gently to earth once again." "How did he react?" "She. My test beast was Manda the matriarch of the transplanted herd, since she was by far the largest. Back then the rest were youngsters. As to how she reacted, it was as you might expect. She was confused, frightened, and angry. She looked around for someone to take it out on, but I had anticipated her reaction and was hiding downwind. I didn't come out into the open till she was a good way off." "Brontotheres are not touchy or belligerent, but they do not suffer fools gladly either. Anyone who crosses them will soon be taught a lesson, the burden of which is: Don't mess with us. It is not for nothing that they are known as the juggernauts of the jungle." "I guess when you stand as high at the shoulder as a Frost Giant and weigh up to ten tons and are armed with two forward pointing horns, you simply proceed as if you have the right of way." Axel conceded. "And yet they are not belligerent. Their sheer size makes them immune to predators. With no natural enemies it is no wonder brontotheres have such placid dispositions. They can watch the world go by unconcerned that anything might harm them." Drew was struck with a further thought: "You know some brontotheres let people take rides on their backs in exchange for treats like sugar beets. Now the riders cannot bid the beasts to go where they will, but the brontotheres never hurt their riders. Brontotheres really like humans and elves and even Frost Giants." "So?" "Well, I was thinking. I know the druids can compel animals to do their bidding, though in the case of brontotheres they prefer to ask out of respect for their intelligence. Druids use Mind Speech to cast images into the consciousness of the beasts. I wonder if any of the young bulls in the reserve could be persuaded to hire out to Frost Giants as mounts or rather to form a partnership. I am not talking ownership. By law no one can own a brontothere. Given their near sentience, it would be tantamount to slavery." "What would be in it for the brontothere?" "Young bull brontotheres often go off on their own for a time to see new horizons, have adventures, and possibly find a mate, either by joining another herd or starting one of their own. Young bulls might welcome a rider who could provide a greater variety of foodstuffs, take care of their feet, scrub their hides, rid them of ticks, draw water from a well in arid country, that sort of thing." "Just imagine a cavalry charge with Finn mounted astride a brontothere. war hammer raised high, lightnings playing about as he charges a gang of bandits or a band of trolls. The beast itself is a fearsome combatant with those two forward pointing horns and its bulk and strength. The folded skin of a brontothere is so thick it is like armor, able to shrug off arrows shot by puny humans. Now trolls do draw more powerful bows, but even their arrows won't penetrate to the vitals of a brontothere." "True, but there is one weapon that could stop a brontothere charge," Axel pointed out. "Oh, what weapon is that?" "Caltrops. Armies deploy them against horse cavalry. With four prongs arranged in a tetrahedron, you can just throw them on the ground certain that one spike will point straight up. As with horses, the weight of a brontothere would drive the spike into its foot pads and cripple it." "True. Scouts would have to recon the ground first. Or Finn could use his control of magnetism to sweep the caltrops out of his path. As could anyone with the magnetic gift. " "It's an intriguing notion," Axel and Liam both conceded. "Let's run it by Finn and the next druid who visits the capital." Chapter 2. Envoy "So why has the Chief Hand Baron Jarmond invited us all in to this meeting?" Drew Altair asked his huge lover Finn Ragnarson one morning as he stretched in bed. "Why ask me, Drew? You really think the brass tells me anything? Even after two years of training and independent assignments, I am still just a journeyman Hand of the Commonwealth." Rolling to the other side of their bed and poking his other lover Axel Wilde, Drew asked: "Axel, surely Sir Willet has confided in you." "Sorry fellas, but anything my boss tells me in confidence has to stay that way. Anyway we will all find out in just a few hours. Let's wash up, put on our uniforms and go down to breakfast." "Right now?" Drew asked. "Can't we fool around a little first? Finn's prodigious morning wood is inspirational." Just then Finn's stomach grumbled. The ever pragmatic Frost Giant shook his head and announced. "Too bad I can satisfy only one appetite at a time. Since I have to choose, this time I'll pick my stomach. I am starving." "Does Finn ever stop eating, Drew?" Axel asked rhetorically and not for the first time. Their Frost Giant lover had a well-deserved reputation as a trencherman "About as often as the twins stop talking." the diminutive red-head replied. The participants met in a conference room just down the corridor from the chamber where the ruling council met in plenary session. Baron Jarmond, Chief of the Dread Hands of the Commonwealth introduced them to stranger dressed in flowing robes and a headdress which left only his face and hands visible. By his features he looked to be a man of middle years with a not inconsiderable admixture of elven blood. "Tahsildar Mewalal, let me introduce our conferees. First in precedence is the druid Lord Dahlderon, obviously of elven heritage. Next is the war wizard Sir Willet Hanford and his aide Axel Wilde. The Frost Giant is Finn Ragnarson, reportedly an avatar of Thor, the Thunder God of the Norse. That little red-head on the right is the journalist Drew Altair who holds a reserve commission with the rank of ensign in the army of the the Commonwealth of the Long River. And finally, the two blond youths are Sirs Jemsen and Karel Holders of the Military Cross for Valor and famous for being the only humans alive honored as Elf-Friends, Dwarf-Friends, and Giant-Friends. They are also the deadliest archers on the planet." "Gentlemen you are no doubt wondering why I asked you here today. The reason stands before you, an envoy who has brought us vital intelligence about the trolls. He has already met with the Ruling Council and revealed much that will help us fight this war. We now know where the trolls come from, what they want, and why they seem so intent on occupying New Varangia and the uninhabited area to the south all the way to the Barren Coast, which are called the Barren Lands though we really know nothing about them." "Our visitor is Islon Mewalal, the Tahsildar of Nancowry which is one of the islands in the Southern Ocean. He is still learning our language so at this meeting he will communicate with us via Mind Speech, which is one of his magical gifts." <I should explain that Nancowry is a large island in the little known archipelago lying in the south temperate zone far beyond the normal oceanic shipping routes which skirt the shores of your continent of Valentia. My title of Tahsildar is roughly equivalent to that of a regional governor, though Nacowery is now lost. I and all my people have had to abandon our homeland thanks to relentless attacks by the trolls.> <For millennia humans and elves shared the archipelago with the race you call trolls. We settled in the east and they in the west. For a long while we had little contact. Eventually our frontiers of settlement met somewhere in the middle. At first the races accepted that initial division of the archipelago. There was plenty of room to expand on the many vacant islands bypassed during the initial wave of expansion to the frontiers.> <The trolls were never good neighbors. They traded with us only grudgingly and never thought to learn our language. Very few of us ever learned theirs. Instead we relied on those like myself gifted with Mind Speech for communication. Still we mostly left each other along; hostilities were rare and on a very small scale. Then some three centuries ago an intolerant proselytizing religion arose among the trolls, the main tenet of which is an implacable hostility to magic of any kind. Trolls have no magic of their own and had always been envious of ours. The new religion preached that only the gods should have such powers. Their aversion to magic cut off all communication with them. Mind Speech was considered a mental invasion.> <The trolls universally consider it their sacred duty to destroy all who use magic, not only those individuals with actual gifts but the entire races from which magic users spring: humans, elves, Frost Giants, and dwarves. They have little use for other non-magical races like orcs but don't go out of their way to attack them.> "Sounds like both the trolls and their gods are simply jealous of magic among mortals. That is a hell of a reason to destroy so many lives and throw away so many of their own in perpetual warfare." <Trolls dedicate their lives to the worship and the service of their gods. Nothing else really matters.> "Nonsense! Life is what matters, not gods who are probably just personifications of natural forces. Anyway why would the gods value the worship of mere mortals? Are their deities really that vainglorious and self-centered that they demand constant praise and sycophancy? And what, other than their supposed existence, makes them worthy of worship?" Jensen asked shaking his head. <Such considerations are why we ourselves have largely abandoned our own historic gods. They haven't helped us much as far as anyone can see. So what good are they?> "Where have your people fled to?" Drew asked. "To the eastern continent of Karelia which is out of the path of the trolls' advance. Now that they control the entire archipelago they are looking for new worlds to conquer." "So why is the advance of the trolls directed at Valentia?" Drew persisted. <That is a very good question, young man. It is a matter of geography. The archipelago is a collection of islands joined by shallow connecting seas. Your Great Inland Freshwater Sea is the inverse or mirror image of that geography, a collection of coastal states, islands, and peninsulas scattered across a third of a continent on the various shores, lobes and embayments of a gigantic lake. They feel at home there, much more than they would along the forbidding coastlands on the tempestuous outer ocean.> <The trolls hold a couple of coastal enclaves on the ocean, having easily repulsed the efforts of the small coastal states to throw them back. They also control corridors leading inland which provide them access to the interior via rivers and easy portages across low watersheds. Their longships have a very shallow draft. In one spot they actually dug a canal to connect a stream flowing toward the ocean to a tributary of a river flowing into the Great Inland Freshwater Sea.> <The attraction of New Varangia is that it is still a largely empty land, mostly virgin land never put to the plow, and isolated from the main centers of power in the middle of the continent: the Commonwealth of the Long River and the Flatlands to the West. That is where they want to forge a new center of power by bringing in soldiers and settlers from the archipelago.> "They had better look elsewhere!" Finn declared. "New Varangia belongs to us Frost Giants and the other races we have invited to settle among us: humans, elves, and dwarves. The troll invasion nearly two years ago has only inspired a greater commitment from us giants to migrate to and hold onto our second homeland. Our population is now seventy-five thousand and likely to reach one-hundred thousand within two years. In less than twenty years we will have half a million giants in New Varangia. No power on Haven will take it from us then. We giants are many, we are strong, we have magic, and we have allies." "As we proved at Flensborg, New Varangia does not stand alone. It is part of the Commonwealth with everything that implies." Jarmond noted. "So how did the trolls defeat your people in the archipelago when you had magic and they did not?" Dahl asked the visitor. <Magic does not win wars by itself. That takes numbers, weapons, military prowess, and political organization. Sadly we humans and elves never go our act together. From lack of unity our various states fell one by one till even a confederation of the rest was not enough to stop the trolls.> "I can understand that easily enough," Sir Willet said. "We war wizards always say that our magic is a force multiplier for the military not a war winner by itself." "In that connection I should tell you that the Commonwealth has been building up its magical defenses against the threat of the eastern barbarians. We persuaded the druids to use their newly developed healing magic to extend the lives of our war wizards who were mostly of human stock with short lifespans typically described as five score and ten. It will take several centuries, but in time that should quadruple our cohort of war wizards." "Then the longevity program was expanded to include those with a single strong magical gift like Fetching and Firecasting. Drew was one of the first chosen. In recent combat against the trolls the Navy proved the value of long range infrasound communications by weather wizards. They and fetchers and those with control over magnetism or fire were being actively recruited for service on the Navy's warships." <Your magical resources far exceed those we could muster. And you have a huge population too. We were far fewer in number, partly because we did not reproduce fast enough. You see among us a same gendered sexual orientation is very common whereas it is quite rare among trolls. Put simply, they made more babies who grew up to be soldiers.> "Then your folk would find our ways congenial, for we are much the same in that respect" Baron Jarmond observed. <So I have learned, and I can see it at first hand around this conference table,> he said nodding toward Finn, Drew, and Axel and the twins too. "Are we that obvious?" Axel asked. Mewalal smiled. <The cues are subtle but unmistakeable, and I can pick up something of your feelings via our mind link. You are a threesome and the twins a couple.> "Actually there is a fourth, Sir Willet's protege Liam, a journeyman war wizard, but he is on assignment with the Navy. " Axel pointed out. "So why are we here, us in particular, at this meeting?" Finn asked. "I was just getting to that, Finn." Jarmond answered. "The Council of the Commonwealth is sending an expedition to explore or better yet to reconnoiter the vacant lands that lie between New Varangia proper and the Barren Coast. It might become terrain we have to fight over." "You Finn are a natural choice to lead the expedition, especially after your success in the Far West. Also you represent both the Frost Giants who will soon absorb those lands into New Varangia and the Commonwealth as a whole. As a Hand of the Commonwealth, you will take formal possession of those lands, establishing our claim by right of exploration. You will also command the military escort, a detachment from the Fyrd. There is nothing like a contingent of Frost Giants to put the fear of death into trolls, isn't there?" "Finn grinned and added: "Especially if one of those Frost Giants is an avatar of a thunder god!" "You twins will navigate, make maps, and draw terrain sketches. And your uncannily accurate archery will come in handy in case of a fight." Jemsen and Karel nodded. Their gifts and skills lent themselves to those roles. "Lord Dahlderon represents the druids and will survey the flora and fauna of the region. Who knows what manner of creatures live there, perhaps even another alien species like the late centaurs of unlamented memory. And this is a chance for the druids to lend a hand in what has mostly been a naval war till now." Sir Willet and his aide Axel Wilde will represent the wizards and the Army. Axel's training as an army medic would come in handy in case of conflict. Drew, as a journalist and historian you will keep the journal of the expedition. I shouldn't wonder if you also get some good articles out of it too for publication in the Capital Intelligencer. And we all know how effective your powers can be in battle." "You may be few in number but able to call upon formidable magical powers to protect yourselves: a druid, a war wizard, a thunder god, and a powerful fetcher supported by archers and heavy infantry should have little to fear even if you do run into trouble." "We'll all have to set aside our various business interests," Jemsen noted, "but we can do so in good conscience. Our business agent Lennart has matters well in hand not only with our mapping and Zinger companies but also Axel's street lighting operation. McFarden can manage the ventures in which we have made passive investments." "And Finn had already made his major contribution to the infant refrigeration industry with his technical expertise in ice house and ice boxes. Count Klarendes and Artor are already supplying ice to their initial subscribers with plans for a big expansion in a few months to meet the burgeoning demand. It seems like everyone in the capital suddenly wants an ice box and a steady supply of ice. And all the taverns are eager to serve cold beer, preferably with a Frost Giant behind the bar to lend atmosphere. As you would expect, with his head for figures, Aodh is handling the accounts." "Good. That means that none of you will have any trouble getting away," Jarmond concluded. "I should also mention that the Navy has established a small base, really just a watchtower with lookouts, at the mouth of the River Calyx which skirts the Barren Lands and leads upstream to Flensborg. The base is not so much to block that invasion route as to alert the Frost Giants and the Admiralty if troll longships show up again." "How would they send word, by heliograph or infrasound?" Drew asked. "Nothing so fancy. The Navy recently inventoried those in the ranks with magical gifts. Several fetchers strong enough to propel a skiff are assigned to the lookout post. Their job is to take word upriver sounding the alarm all the way to Flensborg. From there the Army heliograph will pass the word. The rest of the tiny garrison will disperse, escape and evade riding north across country. "Which reminds me," Karel ventured hand raised. "This time we get to ride horses, don't we?" Jarmond nodded. "Everyone except the Frost Giants." Chapter 3. Flensborg No one was more excited about the expedition than Axel Wilde who, at eighteen, was very much the youngest member of the expedition. The wizard's aide would finally get his chance to go into the field on a real mission, not just on maneuvers as he had done so often before. This was the real thing. "Who knows what secrets lie hidden in a land cut off for millennia from all contact by the centaur menace and the unpromising topography of the Barren Coast. We might come upon the remains of a lost civilization destroyed by the centaurs. Perhaps those lands harbor monsters every bit as alien as the centaurs themselves, giant spiders or beasts with tentacles or poisonous spines." The twins smiled indulgently at Axel's boyish enthusiasm, merely reminding him of the point Balandur always made that adventures were dangerous and uncomfortable and you couldn't count on regular meals. The first stage of the journey was easy enough. The party booked passage on a riverboat heading south on the Long River. As the miles passed Axel saw at first hand the reason for the power and prosperity of the Commonwealth. Its agricultural heartland was a huge rift valley hundreds of leagues long and eighty wide created eons earlier by tectonic forces which raised parallel mountain ranges east and west and dropped the bedrock under the land in between. Its alluvial soils were the most productive cropland on the planet. The party left the boat at a port far to the south and took a coach over the highway which crossed the valley, passed through the Western Mountains, then crossed the Western Plains all the way to Flensborg. The team got a proper reception there. The Frost Giants made much of their heroes. The twins of course were giant-friends and veterans of the Long March of the Frost Giants and the Second Centaur War. Drew was another giant-friend and a veteran of the second war against the centaurs and more recently the Troll War. Finn Ragnarson was the local hero who had made the Long March of the Frost Giants and had fought in two wars against the centaurs and the war against the trolls. And though Finn's status as an avatar of Thor was a polite fiction, it still counted for much among those who had seen him fight at Flensborg or had read about his exploits in Drew's accounts in the Capital Intelligencer and his latest bestseller. Dahlderon was the druid lord who, not so very long ago, had defeated the evil wizard Sir Janus, which was only one of his many notable accomplishments in the defense of the Commonwealth in particular and the planet's biosphere in general. Sir Willet and Axel were strangers, but it soon became known that Axel and Finn and Drew were lovers. The leaders of the Frost Giants welcomed the travelers at a banquet in their honor. The speeches by Oddr Bjarnson, the recently re-elected governor of New Varangia, and Harald Sigurdsen, the war chief of the Frost Giants, were blessedly short. Old Arn spoke at length, but then Arn was an accomplished raconteur whose stories and jokes put everyone in a good mood. Drew renewed his acquaintance with the shipper Ragnar Svenson, the Frost Giant who had devised the wily stratagem of blocking the river at the shipyards to force the trolls to fight on unfavorable ground. Finn's brother Hrolgar was there too. Finn would stay with him during the few days it would take to put the expedition together. Hrolgar was proud of his new street lighting operation which showed that Flensborg with its population of eleven thousand was on the cusp of modernity. The rest of the party occupied the refurbished officers' quarters in the main barracks of the old fort, which had lain unused for more than a year since Major Ter Horst's battalion of cavalry had transferred to the Far West. At the fort the Fyrd used only the offices, armory, meeting rooms, and kitchen. Since this was the last time for a long while when the youngsters would sleep in real beds, they made the most of their opportunity. Dahl and the twins shared a room as did Drew and Axel. Jensen and Karel had been Dahl's first true lovers, the first boys whose companionship was a matter of his own unconstrained choice. Dahl had been happy to get away from home and the more or less compulsory casual sex which young elves were expected to provide to their elders and the friends the older elves lent him to. The trio of friends had bonded during that first journey across the continent of Valentia, hiking cross country toward and then along the Great Trade Road that linked the League of Independent Towns, then across the Western Plains and down the Long River to the capital, after which the took the road ran across the valley and through the eastern mountains to Dalnot the garrison town on the eastern plains. There the twins joined the army as civilian scouts. Along the way they had met and been befriended by Balandur and Aodh and Count Klarendes, had fought Trackers and Black Riders, and had braved other dangers and foes. Thanks to elven healing magic all three youths looked no older than when they had first met a decade earlier. The twins would look to be eighteen or nineteen for centuries and Dahl would remain sweet sixteen indefinitely thanks to his innate healing magic. Their enhanced vitality made for energetic, athletic, and acrobatic sex play, By now all three were experts in the amatory arts. They had had plenty of practice. For one thing they had largely financed their first journey together working as rent boys in taverns and inns along the way. For another, Dahl's mentor and lover the druid Owain had tutored all of them in male love. Dahl eagerly submitted himself to the ministrations of his blond lovers. The twins were experts at foreplay and were intimately familiar with Dahl's erogenous zones. No one except Dahl's druid lovers back in the Great Southern Forest could arouse him quicker and more intensely. But then the sex drive of druids is incredibly strong thanks to their life affirming magic. The twins loved to double team the smaller elf-boy, plugging both ends at once or sandwiching him between them. Dahl relished the feel of the sculpted musculature of their hard bodies pressing against his own, all slick and slippery and salty with perspiration. Not to mention that Jemsen and Karel were reasonably well-endowed and knew how to use the equipment nature had supplied them with. But Dahl's relationship with the twins went beyond sex. Jemsen and Karel were boys he knew would walk with him down the centuries as lovers, friends, companions, comrades in arms, and participants in all manner of future adventures. The keen minds of the twins were part of the attraction too. Dahl had no time for dullards. And if the twins were incessant chatterboxes plying everyone around them with endless questions, it was to good purpose. Asking questions was how you learned things not written down in books. As for Drew and Axel, what had originally drawn them both together was their relationship with Liam. Now they were friends, roommates, and lovers in their own right. Besides the great sex, the boys had quite a lot in common. Both were short, smart, and literary even bookish but also athletic and outgoing. Neither was a shut-in. They had grown closer while their lover Liam was away on assignment with the Navy where he was paired with another nice boy, Ensign Nathan Lathrop on the CS Petrel whom they too had met while he convalesced at the naval hospital in the capital. Now Dahl was friends with all of them though not lovers with Finn or Axel, much less Liam or Nathan. Nevertheless he knew them all for good kids, nice kids, guys he liked and admired a whole lot. Take Axel, a boy of humble origins who had found his way into a job that perfectly suited his talents, had joined a circle of worthy friends, and was well on his way to financial security thanks to his pioneering street lighting business. You could do a whole lot worse than having people like that in your life. Finn's temporary stay in the capital was drawing to a close. Once Finn got instated in full he would most likely be based in Flensborg. A Dread Hand was not usually assigned to his native region to prevent even the appearance of partially and conflict of interests, but an exception would likely be made in Finn's case. The Frost Giants would feel more secure having an avatar of their thunder god around in these perilous times. Sir Willet did not seek out companionship while in Flensborg. He was in a long term relationship with his housekeeper, a fine lady who kept refusing his offers to make an honest woman out of her. She said that she had no desire to rise above her station as she perceived it. No one would ever call her Lady Hanford. [The wife of a knight is addressed as Lady; a female with the rank of a knight is a Dame] Finally the expedition was ready to set out. The explorers would be escorted by two squads of Frost Giants making a total of twenty-one heavy infantry. They were all volunteers, recent immigrants whose service would them earn a government grant, one large enough to get a farm going. Farmland itself was free and for the asking. You only had to register it with the land office. Sergeant Sven Ingersen was placed in direct command of the two squads of infantry with Finn in overall command of the expedition. There were also ten human teamsters to drive the five supply wagons and a cook and his driver cum helper on a cook wagon, There were no villages or towns or even farms where they were going. So large a party could not live off the land even with a druid to draw in prey for the hunters. They would have to bring most supplies with them. Not that they wouldn't take the occasional deer or elk they ran across. Finally the Fyrd assigned a pair of human scouts from its mounted constabulary which normally patrolled the highways. On the morning of their departure as a crowd looked on the expeditionary corps formed up on the outskirts of Flensborg. The march order had an infantry squad up front, then the explorers mounted on horses, all of them tractable mares, next the supply and cook wagons, with the second squad bringing up the rear. Once past the settled area, the scouts or the twins would ride ahead as much to select the route of march as to look for trouble. The Frost Giants marched unencumbered by their heavy shields and caltrops which were in the wagons. The did bear their standard weapons of a long sword, a sling, and a pouch of smooth round stones or lead bullets hung from their belts. They bore their twelve foot spears on their shoulders or used them as walking sticks . For armor Finn wore only vambraces and steel backed gauntlets and a buckler hung from his belt. For weapons he contented himself with his war hammer Mjolnir. On this mission even the twins stayed in their army uniforms of green silk rather than going skin clad as they usually did. Sir Willet wore riding boots; the others wore sandals -- even Axel who usually favored moccasins -- but the hard sole of a sandal was better with stirrups. Mounted as they were, they brought no quarterstaffs. The twins had their bows and kukris and Drew his pouches of steel spheres and soporific darts. Axel carried only a long knife. His job was not to fight but to watch Sir Willet's back and to treat wounds or injuries with the medical kit in his saddle bags. Like Drew the twins held reserve commissions in the Army, which in their case carried the rank of captain. Sir Willet outranked the twins and Drew with the courtesy rank of major but only in precedence. War wizards never held command. Axel ranked as a warrant officer, while Dahlderon, as druid, was beyond mere military rank. No more soft beds or even cots, only groundsheets and mats to keep their bodies away from the damp of the earth. They would all sleep in tents made of tough silk big enough for Frost Giants. Finn would bunk with his own people. The human members of the expedition would sleep in one of two tents with the teamsters and scouts. That made for a lot of naked bodies in close proximity. So for the sake of decorum, the boys suspended their love lives while in such close quarters. Not that they didn't look for opportunities to pair off and find some secluded spot. Heads held high and full of hope and excitement, the intrepid explorers set off into the unknown. Chapter 4. The Petrel "Good morning, Sailing Master Crawley. I see we are making good time with a fresh wind to fill our sails." "So we are, Ensign Lathrop. The rigging on a schooner like our Petrel lets our sails optimize airflow and maximize the impetus imparted by the wind. Our heading is 180, due south, with only a slight swell on our starboard beam. This is the farthest south we have ever reached, six days out from our base at the Scilly Isles, well beyond the waters claimed by the the Commonwealth of the Long River. And so far, we have not sighted a single troll longship. It makes you wonder what they are up to." "I imagine we will find out in due course and sooner than we wish." "Aye to that," the sailing master affirmed. The two naval officers spoke with the easy camaraderie of combat veterans who fought side by side against a deadly foe. The carnivorous trolls were the common enemy of all the races on Haven who could wield magic: humans, elves, dwarves, and frost giants. In their first battle together Nathan had been grievously wounded when a troll axe cleaved his lower left leg, yet he now walked with only a slight limp thanks to an excellent prosthetic fitted at the naval hospital. The sailing master was a grizzled man of middle years though hale and hearty. He could still scramble into the rigging with the best of them. The ensign was much younger, still short of his nineteenth birthday and a stood a little under medium height. He had the willowy build and smooth musculature of an elf though he was of fully human stock. Nathan Lathrop was boyishly cute, a freckle-faced carrot-topped youngster who looked much too young to be an officer in the Navy of the Commonwealth. A walking wet dream, that was the only way to described the scrumptious sailor. "Land ho!" came the cry from the lookout in the crow's perch. "Three points off the port bow." [A point is an angle of 11.25 degrees or one eighth of a right angle. There are 32 points in a compass rose.] Ages ago the island the lookout had spotted had been the top of a hill in a landscape long since flooded by the constriction of the southern outlet of the Long River, which had gradually flooded a huge portion of the continent of Valentia creating the Great Inland Freshwater Sea. As the ship made its way cautiously into a shallow cove, Nathan called out a warning. "Rocks dead ahead. Not far beneath the surface." Crawley was skeptical but at Captain-Lieutenant Dahlgren's nod ordered the crew to heave to anyway just in case. With the ship stationary, he turned to the young officer and asked: "What's this Nathan about rocks? How can you tell?" Nathan shook his head. "I don't really know how. I just do. At first I wasn't sure what was going on, but then I realized that I could somehow sense what lies below. And not just underwater but on land too. It's weird but true." Dahlgren spoke up then. "Sounds like you might be a delver, Nathan. It is a rare gift and very much in demand for that reason. At sea a delver can gauge the depth of water under the keel and the type of bottom: rock, sand, coral, whatever. On land a delver can magically sense what lies beneath the surface of the earth: sand, gravel, bedrock, minerals, ores and aquifers. Some delvers work with engineers and architects building foundations for bridges, piers, and large buildings." "Does that mean I am starting to manifest a second magical gift?" "Exactly. Your electrum sparks have already proved useful in a fight. Your new gift will prove invaluable for inshore operations where we don't have good charts. To get the most out of it you will need training at the annex of the Institute of Wizardry and Magic in Alster, where the fleet's war wizards and other magic wielders operate from." Dahlgren explained. "Delvers can sense the difference between types of rocks but cannot identify them without training. An apprentice delver takes lessons in geology and mineralogy then goes on field trips over known ground to get a feel for the different types of rocks and structures under the surface such as caverns or mines shafts or salt domes." "Similarly a naval delver, or a sounder as he is sometimes called, has to be able to gauge depth accurately. The gift doesn't make the number of fathoms pop into your head. That takes training to learn what five fathoms feels like. It's all straightforward enough. We'll sign you up for training when we return to port. And congratulations on your new gift." Crawley nodded adding: "It's quite a valuable gift for a naval officer. You should take it as a sign that you really were cut out for the Navy after all, regardless of those six generations of Army officers in your family." For a while Nathan had been the black sheep of the Lathrop family for joining the navy, though he had returned to their good graces thanks to his heroism in combat and the award of the Navy Cross for Valor. More recently he had been Mentioned in Dispatches, him and Crawley both. A leadsman in the ship's gig sounded the bottom and confirmed that a rocky reef barred the entrance to the cove, but that there was a safe passage farther east. The ship dropped anchor there and sent a landing party to explore for sign of trolls. Later Nathan had himself rowed around in the gig, a leadsman calling out the depth which Nathan tried to relate to what his gift told him. He quickly realized that, gift or not, accurate perception of depth would take some time to develop. It was a learned skill, one he would have to master with practice. The scouts found signs that trolls had stopped at the isle briefly but had moved on. The island really has little to offer anyone, not even a good anchorage. Two days later a cry from the crow's perch warned of the approach of a vast fleet. Their far-viewer tubes showed the Petrel's officers that this was a gigantic convoy. A screen of longships formed the close escort for hundreds of vessels of all sorts, mostly transports and supply ships. Standing off from the convoy was a covering force of two hundred warships, mostly longships but some captured sailing vessels as well. Four of the longships peeled off and headed for the Petrel, its rowers clearly intent on catching up to the Navy ship and keep her from reporting the presence of the convoy. Their oars just might make them faster in the short term than the Petrel, which would have to sail against the wind, tacking back and forth toward the Scilly Isles. Dahlgren summoned their weather wizard Warrant Office Varney and told him to send a dispatch via infrasound. Pitched below the range of human hearing, the vibrations could carry a hundred miles or more. "Make to Admiralty from CS Petrel, Captain-Lieutenant Dahlgren commanding. `Vast troll armada heading for the Barren Coast. Position such and such. Will shadow.' The sailing master will give you our exact position. If you will Mr. Crawley." "Aye aye sir." Nautical navigation combined the techniques of dead reckoning with astronomical observations and even triangulation from landmarks when close to shore. A sailor dropped a chip log (really a weighted wooden triangle) overboard and timed the speed by which the line unreeled. The bearing was read from a magnetic compass. Speed and bearing were recorded every half hour on a simple peg board. From that record Crawley could estimate their position by dead reckoning. Crawley could also sight the sun or navigational stars as a check on latitude. Longitude was always iffy, since the chronometer was unknown on Haven. The gift of unerring direction helped less than it did on land. It took training in the calculations necessary to translate the straight line distance to a known point on the planetary sphere into a rhumb line, the constant bearing to a destination or way point. Once Crawley provided the ship's position, Varney added it to the message on his slate which he had coded for transmission as bursts of low frequency sound, a mix of long and short ones in groups of three that spelled out the 42 letters of the alphabet, the ten numerals, and punctuation as well. Invoking his gift, he thumped the air around him to create the infrasound vibrations that a fellow weather wizard could detect from afar. Barney sent the message twice trusting it would be relayed by the next ship on picket duty till it reached first the Scilly Isles then fleet HQ at Alster. "Now let's see about our pursuers. Mister Varney, I am open to suggestions." "By your leave sir. I'll call up a waterspout and send it against all four longships." "Eminently appropriate, Mister Varney. Make it so." When the weather wizard invoked his powers, what had been puffy white fair weather clouds turned dark gray and reformed as a squall line between the Petrel and the trolls. Its gust front made the waters choppy while lightning flashed in the clouds accompanied by the rumble of thunder. The trolls in the longships looked fearfully up at the threatening sky. Soon a whirling funnel of wind descended from the clouds, touched the sea, and formed a waterspout. On land the funnel cloud of a tornado is dark but over water the cone of a waterspout is white. It came at them, a spinning whirling shroud of doom. Still not at full strength, the waterspout intercepted the longship in the lead, throwing many of its crew off their rowing benches into the sea or sucking them up into the sky, only to release them and let them to fall into the water where they drowned dragged down by the weight of their armor. That was just for starters, a tactic to terrify the rest of the fleet and make all in it realized how vulnerable they were to attack by the Commonwealth's magic wielders. With the waterspout now at full strength the weather wizard finished off his first victim then attacked two more longships in quick succession. The waterspout lifted them partway out of the water twisting and shattering the strakes of their hulls. Soon all that remained was floating debris. Lighting flashed down from the clouds and set the last longship aflame, turning it into a funeral pyre for its crew. The weather wizard nodded, satisfied with his work and careful to husband his strength for future encounters. "With your permission sir, I'll just let that last one burn rather than put her under." Dahlgren nodded. He knew that to sailors nothing was more terrifying than a fire aboard ship. The Petrel heeled over and put some room between her and the troll armada. She shadowed the enemy for several days, long enough to confirm their initial observation that the course of the armada lead to the Barren Coast. Two days after peeling off from the armada, the Petrel rendezvoused with the rest of the squadron at their base at the Scilly Isles. Their former captain and now squadron commander Commodore Dekker confirmed that the entire High Seas Fleet had put to sea and was sailing to intercept the troll armada. The job of the squadron would be to reconnoiter the best vector for the fleet's approach. Nathan had his own rendezvous -- with his lover Liam, who came in on a supply ship. Once again Liam was posted to the Petrel to serve as her war wizard for the duration of the emergency. They traded salutes and gripped forearms, which was about as demonstrative as they could be on deck and on duty. Public displays of affection between naval personnel and especially officers was deemed prejudicial to good order and discipline. Still the big grins on their faces evidenced their true feelings for each other. "Lots of changes since I was last aboard," Liam observed looking around. "You better believe it! Thanks to Admiral Van Zant the Bureau of Ships has refitted us with the compact armaments long standard on the river flotillas. That gives us three catapults port and starboard for a total of six. With their recurved bows our new ballistas are so much smaller that we can fit three of them on the foredeck and two on the quarterdeck. Yet they shoot the same giant arrows as the bigger weapons they replaced." "So I see. And the new ballistas are fitted with wooden shields to protect their crews. The Petrel is now quite a powerful naval combatant for a schooner with a crew of only seventy. And that is not counting her magic wielders." "Which includes me these day, now that I have manifested two magical gifts." Natan explained his new gift for delving or sounding unseen depths whether on land or on the water. "That's great news, Sparky! Both your gifts are a perfect match for a naval career." "The bad news Liam is that your old berth with the warrant officers has been taken by our weather wizard, Mister Varney." On his first cruise with the Petrel Liam has shared a cabin with Sailing Master Crawley, Surgeon Durban, and Warrant Officer Wyckham, the purser, and had grown close to the first two. "The good news is that you will be sharing a cabin with me and the other junior officers." Liam grinned. He knew that the other ensign and the two midshipmen would be pulling regular watches making it easy enough to arrange for privacy in their shared cabin. A physical relationship between officers as close in rank as they were was not against the rule about fraternization. Besides everyone already knew that they were lovers. They also respected how Liam has proved his loyalty by standing by Nathan after he was crippled. Though to look at Nathan with his prosthetic fitting so neatly into his boot, you would hardly think he had lost part of his lower left leg to a troll axe. As during their first cruise a green cord on the latch to their cabin told others that the pair did not care to be disturbed. Nathan and Liam celebrated their reunion with a lively bout of lovemaking. For Liam it had been far too long since he had been with the cute ensign. For Nathan, it had been just as long since he had been with anyone at all, not just Liam. But then Liam shared rooms and beds with Drew and Axel. As far as his love life went Nathan was effectively alone aboard a ship with a complement of seventy. At dinner in the wardroom Captain Dahlgren toasted Liam's return to the Petrel. For Liam it was like old times with the grizzled sailing master to his left and the kindly but often grumpy surgeon to his right. Both were fine shipmates and very good at their jobs. It was the surgeon who had saved Nathan's life, rushing forward under fire to tend to his grievous wound, tying off the blood vessels so he would not bleed out. Sailing Master Crawley had been the very first of the Petrel's crew he had met while the ship was undergoing repairs at the naval base at Alster. The squadron arrived at the Barren Coast three days before the fleet. Through their far-viewer tubes they got a pretty good look at what the trolls were up to. It turned out that the vast armada was a follow up to an advance force sent some weeks earlier to secure a foothold on Barren Coast. Sailor and engineers had anchored floating piers that had been towed across the sea while workers had dug a dozen stairways up the face of the chalk cliffs which rose no more than sixty feet. Cranes lifted supplies from the shore to the top of the cliffs. On land engineers were building a palisade for a fort while surveyors laid out a town and fields. This was not just a military operation. The trolls were planting a colony in the Barren Lands. Commodore Dekker suspected that the trolls had deliberately allowed his squadron's scout ships to get as close as they did. The trolls knew that the Commonwealth Navy would have to attack their armada, but this time it would be at a time and place of the trolls' own choosing when they would deploy many more longships than the High Seas Fleet plus captured sailing ships modified for boarding operations. They had also improved their technique for grappling and boarding enemy vessels from longships. The last section of the lines to their grapnels hooks were chain rather than rope. Unlike hemp, it would take more to cut through the iron links than a single swipe with a naval cutlass. It would take several good whacks with an ship's axe, but there were only a few of those aboard naval vessels. They weren't weapons but tools used to cut tangled or downed rigging. The coming battle was shaping up as the climactic showdown between the trolls and the Commonwealth of the Long River. Author's Note This story is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead. If you have enjoyed this story and others like it, consider making a donation to the Nifty Archive. It is so easy. They take credit cards. Point your browser to http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html This story is one of an occasional series about the further adventures of the characters introduced in the fantasy novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends' and published by Nifty Archive. The chief protagonist of the novel, Dahlderon, elf-boy and druid, will appear in these stories in a supporting rather than starring role. Each story in the sequence stands on its own, with the focus on one or just a few of the original characters. Readers who like these stories might want to try my two series 'Daphne Boy' and 'Naked Prey' in the Gay/Historical section of the Archive. My 'Jungle Boy' series of Hollywood tales is posted in the Gay/Authoritarian section. The recent series 'Andrew Jackson High' relates the trials and tribulations of five of its gay students. For links to these and other stories, look on the list of Prolific Authors on the Archive. Comments and feedback welcome.