Elf-Boy's Friends 12
Trolls, Part III
The War on Land
by George Gauthier
[The further adventures of characters from the novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends']
Chapter 5. At the Rendezvous
"Hell's bells, Dekker. This report of your battle reads like an historical romance set during the Corsair War."
Commodore Van Zant, commander of the naval squadron of which Captain Dekker's own ship the Petrel was a part could hardly contain his delight. Seated at his desk in his cabin aboard the flagship the officer waved the report and continued:
"In the most remarkable single ship engagement in the history of the Navy you sank fourteen longships and damaged another and sent over a thousand trolls to the bottom of the sea. You also proved the value of infrasound communications in naval warfare. And if anyone at the Admiralty was still skeptical about war wizards on navy ships, you have taken the wind out of their sails. I'd love to watch their faces when they read your report. It sails with the hospital ship in the morning."
"Thank you sir, though I deeply regret the butcher's bill. Of our complement of seventy only twelve men came through entirely hale and hearty. Eleven were killed outright; three later died of their wounds; four survivors lost limbs; and everyone else was wounded in one way or another. Thanks to the assistance of the healers from the other ships of the squadron almost all the wounded, save the amputees, have returned to duty."
"I'll still need thirty replacements if the Petrel is to continue to operate with the squadron. And we really need those two squads of naval infantry if we are going to come to close quarters with the trolls again."
"You will get everything you need, Dekker. It is up to us to deal with the trolls till help arrives. The High Seas Fleet should have put out to sea by now, though we are too far from our base at Alster for even infrasound communications. Next time we will station ships to relay messages all the way to base."
"So it will be a week at the earliest before the Fleet can concentrate against the enemy. By that time I fear the trolls will have rowed those longships of theirs up the River Calyx which flows past Flensborg."
"Do we have any estimate of their numbers, sir?"
"At least five thousand, maybe six, all of them warriors. If this is part of a folk migration, their females and whelps are coming with a later wave. Now counting our sailors and the naval infantry we number fifteen hundred. So I am open to suggestions."
"Can we send warning to the Frost Giants?"
"Not by courier. The trolls are between us and our allies ashore."
"Could the weather wizards aboard the scout ships combine their powers to reach Flensborg?"
"Even if they could, to whom would they relay the warning? There has to be another weather wizard at the other end to receive it."
"There is. I happen know that many of their colleagues ashore have taken up new careers as local weather predictors. They have jobs on the staff of all the major news-papers. Flensborg has a paper and it does publish weather forecasts. I got that from my own war wizard Warrant Officer Liam whose boyfriend Drew Altair is a journalist and familiar with the town."
"Then let's get on it immediately."
The commodore gave the necessary orders. Soon all six weather wizards were at work sending the warning to Flensborg. At the speed of sound it would take the better part of an hour for their transmission to reach there and the same for an acknowledgement to come back. They would give it a half hour and resend their warning and keep at it till they got a reply.
Meanwhile Liam was aboard the hospital ship saying goodbye to his lover Ensign Nathan Lathrop. Liam presented his lover with a souvenir, the very same axe that had taken his lower leg off just above the ankle. The blade had been driven into the deck, and before the troll could yank it out, he had been killed.
Ironically, it was that very blade, pressing against the end of Nathan's wound that had kept him from bleeding out. It slowed his blood loss enough for their ship's surgeon, Warrant Officer Durban, to get to him in time to attend his wound. It was the surgeon who had retrieved the axe as a souvenir for his patient. He had served in the Navy long enough to know that it would appeal to the black humor that combat veterans develop as a result of their experiences.
"Just brandish this in the faces of the old Army fogies in your family. This and your Navy Cross. Black sheep indeed!"
Nathan laughed.
"You sound madder at them than I am."
"For you, they are still family. For me, they are justâ the Army."
"Now you sound like Captain Dekker."
"Seriously though, Nathan. Take care of yourself. I imagine that by the time I get back you will already be up and about, stumping around on your peg leg."
"A peg leg is for pirates in the old tales. These days medical artificers create prostheses custom fitted for each patient. My stump will fit perfectly in the socket and the base will be shaped just like a foot. I'll even be able to wear my regular boots. It will look perfectly natural, except I will walk with a limp since I cannot really flex the wooden foot nor push off with my big toe. Otherwise no one could tell."
"Except the lover who shares your bed."
"Yes. I hope you won't find myâ well my loss a turn off. I understand that sometimes happens to relationships after crippling injuries."
"Don't worry about that. If it were not against doctor's orders, I would be taking advantage of you right now, as you lie there in bed helpless to resist."
"No you wouldn't. Not with the doctor himself standing right here. Isn't that right, Surgeon Durban?"
"Indeed it is. I am afraid you will have to curb your enthusiasm for a while, Liam."
"You know, Liam. I'll be spending my convalescent leave with my family in the capital and undergoing rehabilitation at the naval hospital there. We can see each other then."
"Sounds like plan. I love you, Nathan. Very much. And I won't love you any the less for your loss. Well, maybe just a tiny bit less. After all, there is a little less of you to love now, isn't there?"
"Liam, that has got to be absolutely the very worst joke you have ever laid on me. I have half a mind to take this axe to you and even things up!"
In response to his mock threat Liam bent down and hugged his friend.
"Mmm. That's better. I love the press of your body against mine, Liam. And your body warmth."
They kissed and separated. Just before he went through the hatch [i.e. the door] Liam half turned and with a cheery wave said:
"See you soon, Sparky."
He almost got away clean except Nathan caught him with an electrum spark to his tush, eliciting a cry of "Yikes!"
Surgeon Durban's own eyes glistened at this reaffirmation of their love. He had grown fond of them during their cruise, both the cute carrot-topped youngster in the bunk and the raven-haired beauty with wizard's eyes who was his lover.
. . . . . . .
"Ah Liam," Dekker said as the wizard returned to the Petrel. "Let's go to my cabin so I can brief you on the Petrel's part in the coming operation against the trolls and your own part in particular."
"So we are going after them sir, not waiting for the fleet?"
"That's right. Here, come inside."
They picked the thread up again in the captain's cabin.
"We cannot wait and leave the Frost Giants to face this threat alone. Their population of fifty thousand is spread across a large country. That means the trolls could overwhelm the various local militias that comprise the Fyrd and defeat them in detail. Flensborg itself has only seven or eight thousand inhabitants. Even drawing from the countryside out to a distance of say two days' march, the Frost Giants could assemble maybe fifteen hundred fighters in any one place on such short notice. They need us, our own fifteen hundred strong right arms and our two war wizards and our weather wizards. We can fall on the trolls from the rear."
"Also, and we cannot count on this, but Flensborg is linked by heliograph to the Army base at Plainsville. The Army would certainly help if they knew of the danger. Believe me, we could use several battalions of heavy cavalry in the fight that is shaping up."
"Your job, Liam, is to lead us up the River Calyx. We will need your eyes that can see in the dark to let us keep going even at night. The Petrel is the lead ship because it carries a war wizard, unlike the other scouts which carry weather wizards. Only the flagship bears another war wizard."
"You can count on me, sir. And by the time we get there. I will be back to full strength, magically speaking, and somewhat stronger than before from having made a maximum effort during the battle at sea."
"Excellent."
A few hours later the weather wizards got through to the Frost Giants. And yes, Flensborg had passed the warning on to the Army at Plainsville via the heliograph. They had also alerted the Commonwealth headquarters in the Far West.
Chapter 6. Flensborg
"Gosh Finn, am I lucky or what?", the diminutive red-headed human said to his gigantic friend who stood three feet taller. "I come here on assignment to write about how humans, elves, and dwarves have fared in New Varangia and find myself smack in the middle of the biggest news story of the year."
In the last year or so, Finn had shot up a foot to top out at eight feet even and bulked out gaining two hundred pounds, all of it bone and muscle, a fast growth spurt often associated with a manifestation of a powerful magical gift.
Of course, all Frost Giants were magical in one way. Their huge bodies, some of them nine feet tall, could hardly sustain themselves much less extend their lifespans to nearly a thousand years without magic. But for most Frost Giants, their magic was purely internal. Magical gifts like Firecasting, Fetching, and even Calling Light manifested much less frequently among the giants than among their human allies or even the dwarves, much less the elves, a magical race themselves.
"What is so lucky about being caught up in another war, Drew?"
"Bearing witness to war is exactly what a war correspondent like myself is supposed to do. I am a journalist. It is in my blood, a calling if you will. And thanks to me the Capital Intelligencer will scoop all the other papers in the Commonwealth, except the one here in Flensborg. That will please my publisher and editor no end."
"You mean your father and older brother."
"Same thing."
Drew Altair was not unaware of the dangers. Like Finn Drew was a veteran of the Second Centaur War and a number of other fights. So far he had never used his powers to kill a human or a Frost Giant, the gods forbid, but he had shown himself to be a deadly combatant thanks to his magical gift. Drew had also used his powers in rescue work saving victims of floods and earthquakes.
Fetching, as telekinesis was called on the Planet of Haven, let Drew wield steel spheres the size of peaches, whirling them around or back and forth at high speed to smash through the heads and bodies of his foes. At close quarters he could shield himself by whirling his spheres in a short arc back and forth one high one low to fend off his foes. In close quarter combat he could blind a foe by yanking the eyeballs out his head. And he could protect himself against arrows and slung bullets with his so-called Missile Shield.
It was just dumb luck that had placed Drew in Flensborg just as word arrived from weather wizards sailing with a squadron of the Commonwealth Navy that a horde of trolls at least five thousand strong were on their way. Even now the invaders were rowing up the River Calyx which flowed past Flensborg and would arrive in a matter of days.
Oddr Bjarnson, the civic leader of the Frost Giants and elected governor of New Varangia had declared a state of emergency. Harald Sigurdsen, the war chief of the Frost Giants had called up the Fyrd, their militia. Too bad he could expect only a little under fourteen hundred to assemble before the trolls arrived. The population of the giants was widely dispersed over their new homeland as the first settlers spread out in search of the very best land to put under the plow. The centaurs they had taken the country from had lived purely by the hunt.
The mounted constabulary manned by humans in the employ of the Frost Giants would not take part in the coming battle. They were a police force, not soldiers, and were dispersed in small contingents the length of the two highways the Commonwealth had constructed across New Varangia to link it with the Commonwealth proper to the east and the Flatlands of the Far West of the continent of Valentia.
But that did not mean that the Frost Giants would fight alone. They had human allies who would fire bows from horse-drawn mobile archery platforms. Moving much faster than infantry, the wagons could attack or retreat at will, firing arrows all the time from behind shields fixed along their sides. Each wagon or stagecoach carried half a dozen archers, some with longbows, others with crossbows, and all the ammunition they could need.
The idea for the archery platforms had come from Finn Ragnarson, who had been inspired by his trip a year earlier to the Far West. Though a stagecoach journey was safe enough in New Varangia, they had later ventured across the unsettled Flatlands. He and his friends Drew Altair and the famous twins Jemsen and Karel, uncannily accurate archers thanks to their gift of Unerring Direction, had readied themselves to repel bandits or rebels or anyone else who might threaten their stagecoach.
The humans who lived among the Frost Giants were glad of a chance to show their mettle and to prove their loyalty to the homeland they now shared with their friends and neighbors the Frost Giants. Many of the young males had been horse nomads on the Western Plains where the old ways of raids and tribal warfare had long been suppressed by the Commonwealth.
Too big and heavy for horses themselves, the giants had welcomed humans in their midst as grooms, handlers, and drivers of the freight wagons and stagecoaches which brought visitors and commerce to their capital city. Flensborg might just be a town right then, but the giants had big plans. Within twenty years they expected immigration from their diaspora to raise their population to half a million. Let trolls or anyone else threaten them then.
So it would be an allied army of almost fourteen hundred Frost Giants and three hundred humans against the trolls who threatened their homes. Unfortunately the more recent immigrants, the dwarves in their caverns and the elves in their enchanted vale were too few and too far from Flensborg to help, though they had been warned.
With any luck, reinforcements would arrive in time from both the Navy and the Army of the Commonwealth. A naval squadron with a contingent of naval infantry and a pair of war wizards was sailing up the River Calyx in pursuit of the trolls while the Army had dispatched a light regiment of three battalions of heavy cavalry from Plainsville, a town at the southern end of the Western Plains. That is west of the Commonwealth proper. Confusingly, the Western Plains lay east of New Varangia.
Drew himself had no intention of holding back to merely witness the impending battle. As a reserve ensign in the Army of the Commonwealth he felt himself obligated to join in the defense of Flensborg, capital of New Varangia, the second homeland of the Frost Giants. Besides, Finn Ragnarson was one of his lovers and his very close friend and sometime comrade in arms. No way he would not use his powers to protect him, just as Finn would use his immense strength, twelve foot spear and long sword to protect Drew. In close quarters Finn might even wield his war hammer, as he called it. Finn had started out as a blacksmith.
In even closer quarters the pair made love, the huge giant and the diminutive human. Finn was much bigger now in every respect. Yet Finn's bigger size and strength made him all the more masculine and attractive to a bottom boy like Drew.
Drew could still pleasure Finn orally but could take him only into his mouth -- no more deep throating. Drew would just choke. Instead Drew licked and smooched the knob of Finn's cock, prodded the slip with the tip of his tongue, sucked the glans and licked the sweet spot just behind all the while stroking the shaft with his small hands
For his part Drew loved to have Finn's huge hands touching him everywhere: ruffling the auburn locks on his head, fingering his ribs, squeezing his buns, thumbing his anal whorl and penetrating it with a questing finger that would arouse him by stroking his joy knot. Finn was also a past master at turning the boy on by tweaking and pulling the nubbins of his nipples, one of Drew's most sensitive erogenous zones.
These days the young giant did not so much mount Drew as cover him, supporting his immense weight on his limbs lest he crush his tiny human lover. Drew could still take the young giant up his quim. One of the benefits of the druidic magic that had transformed his body was greater flexibility and not just in his joints. Though there were limits.
Drew's anal pucker could stretch enough to admit Finn's horse cock and he could still take most of it up his ass. And when the giant came, he filled the insatiable boy's guts with what felt like a gallon of gism. Yet when Finn withdrew he dragged the flesh of Drew's anal ring backwards, pulling it out in an everted cone with a gaping hole in the middle. The shape reminded Finn of a volcano except this one quivered and twitched then pulsated a couple of times before collapsing into a normal crinkly whorl.
When Finn described this 'geological' phenomenon to his lover, he added that it seemed for a while that his anus might never close up.
"You would have to revert to diapers, my friend. And what a shame that would be!"
"That is not the least bit funny."
"Well, you had to have been back here to see it."
"Harrumph!"
"Sorry Drew, but you simply cannot harrumph convincingly. That is reserved for elderly curmudgeons or at least for men of middle years. You are far too young, far too small, and much too pretty to pull it off."
Chapter 7. The Battle for Flensborg
"First let's all agree that the town and this fort are indefensible." asserted Harald Sigurdsen, the war chief of the Frost Giants and commander of the Fyrd, their militia.
The members of the council of war nodded. Everyone knew that the wooden palisades of fort and town had been erected as protection against raiders or remnants of the centaurs who had originally lived in that country. The town itself had long ago spread beyond its walls. As for the fort, it served well enough as a headquarters and armory. The council met in a chamber there, but the fort no longer had any military significance.
"We have to take the fight to the trolls and meet them in open battle. Outnumbered as we are, we must bring the trolls to battle on ground of our own choosing, a place where we have the advantage of position."
"Fine," said Oddr Bjarnson, the civic leader of the Frost Giants and elected governor of New Varangia, "but where would that be exactly."
"We'll need maneuver room for our mobile archers in their wagons." the leader of the human contingent, Ranald Drayk reminded them.
"Room for your wagons, yes, but we must otherwise hem the trolls in so they cannot spread out and overlap our flanks." Bjarnson replied.
At Oddr Bjornson's side sat Finn Ragnarson, his protege for intergovernmental relations and his own personal lucky charm. Harald Sigurdsen was flanked by Old Arn, the senior non-commissioned officer in the Fyrd who could speak for the rank and file.
Also in the room was the human journalist, Drew Altair: war correspondent, reporter for the Capital Intelligencer, veteran of the Second Centaur War, and a Giant-Friend.
Ragnar Svenson, an influential shipper in Flensborg, spoke up.
"We must force them to land south of town, just downstream from the slipways of the shipyards. The ground is spongy there and turns to marshland south of there. That will hem them in and slow down their deployment. Our own forces will take a position on the firm level ground back from the riverbank."
"That would be perfect for our wagons to operate," Drayk agreed, "but why should the trolls land there instead of rowing upstream all the way to the docks at Flensborg?"
"We block the river so they can't. I happen to know that are three ships under construction on the ways right now, big ships built for service on the the Great Inland Freshwater Sea. The river there is just deep enough to float their empty hulls. We can launch them just before the trolls arrive. The ships won't stay afloat for long, incomplete as the work on them now is, especially if we smash a few holes in them. They will sink fast and block the river."
"The trolls will have to land at the slipways or go back downstream and look for a landing place beyond the marsh. The first suitable place is two miles downstream. No, they will land right where we want them."
All members of the council nodded their agreement. It was a good plan.
. . . . . .
"This steady south wind which the weather wizards have called up for us is a godsend, Liam, even though keeping it going for days on end has exhausted them."
"Actually sir restoring equilibrium to the weather systems behind us is what has really drained their energies. The wizards had to turn the wind systems right around, replacing the normal off-shore wind which blows out to sea with a steady south wind blowing northwards. That kind of manipulation is exhausting. I am afraid they won't have anything left for when we confront the trolls."
"Maybe not but we will have two war wizards with us, you and what's his name on the flagship."
"Warrant Officer Braeden."
"Right."
"We are so lucky to have had you on the foredeck like this these past three nights, Liam. Thanks to your night vision, we have not had to heave to at night but could continue sailing upstream. You must have the eyes of a cat to see just by the light of the stars and the smaller moon."
"It's not just my wizardly night vision sir. I use the same tricks as anyoneto get the most out of my night vision: don't stare, shift your gaze, don't look at lights like the lanterns or fires ashore, or if you do, close one eye to preserve its adaptation to low light."
"Another thing that has helped up get up the river so handily Liam, is that the river runs fairly straight with a deep channel within well-defined banks. I hate rivers that meander all over the landscape. They are all shallows and sandbars."
"The only thing worse is trying to sail up a braided river. I was once ordered to do that by an armchair admiral who referred to a map rather than a proper chart. Maps show rivers as squiggly lines with no information about them other than length Ñ nothing about width, depth, volume of flow, or obstacles to navigation like weirs, rapids and cataracts."
"Why did the admiral use a map and not a naval chart?"
"It was all the man had to work with. The Navy does not chart river channels and depths in foreign lands."
"I take it then there was not enough water under the keel?"
Dekker snorted.
"Enough to float a child's toy boat but not a frigate."
"The good news is that we are now hard on the heels of the troll horde, Liam. It looks like we will get there in time."
"How far is it to Flensborg now, Captain Dekker?"
"Only a few miles. We should arrive by noon. Thanks to your infrasound dispatches we know that the trolls are indeed landing just where the Frost Giants want them to. We ourselves will land south of the marshy area. The naval infantry and the sailors in our landing parties will form up and march overland the few miles to the battlefield. With any luck we can fall on their rear just as the trolls engage the Frost Giants."
As it turned out, part of the troll horde had picked the same landing spot south of the marshes, perhaps two thousand of them to judge from the number of longships drawn up on the bank. The trolls had split their forces hoping to catch the Frost Giants in a pincer move when their columns converged.
But two could play that game. The naval force made its own landing and set off in pursuit of the trolls. Dekker was disappointed he had to remain in command of the squadron and the skeleton crews of the ships.
"I am relying on you Dekker to pull these ships out of here if things go badly for us on land." Commodore Van Zant told him. "If we don't get back, take the squadron down river and rendezvous with the fleet.
"But sir, you are our commodore. Isn't your place aboard your flagship?"
"In a sea action, certainly. Not in a land battle. Besides, I can expect that if we succeed the Admiralty will promote me. As an admiral I will never again get a chance to lead a landing party. And I will have you know, Captain Dekker, that I can still swing a pretty mean cutlass. No, my friend, I am going ashore. You covered yourself in glory in the sea battle. Now it is my turn for some fun!"
"Good luck, sir."
An hour later, the Frost Giants and the main body of the trolls were locked in combat near the slipways.
Frustrated in their hopes of rowing all the way to the docks at Flensborg, the trolls had landed only to find that the ground was spongy which hampered their ability to deploy and form their shield wall.
The worst part of the landing was the way the pesky humans took advantage of the disorder in their ranks, swooping down on them in those fast wagons of theirs all the while firing arrows and crossbow quarrels at them.
Unfortunately, once the trolls pushed forward to firm ground they dressed their lines and presented an unbroken shield wall to the archers. Behind their shield wall, the trolls' own archers engaged the humans, firing right over their lines, sending plunging fire into the attacking humans.
At first the trolls aimed at their human enemies. but their arrows could not penetrate the shields fixed to the sides of the wagons. Then the trolls got smart and shifted their aim to the horses drawing the wagons. Their greater strength let the trolls draw bows more powerful than those of the humans. That let them outrange even the long bows of the human archers not to mention their crossbows, a short range weapon in any event.
Troll arrows hit a few of the closer teams of horses, causing the humans to abandon those wagons and scramble aboard others. In one case, a teamster cut a wounded horse out of the traces and drove his wagon out of danger. Faced with an unanswerable threat to the mobility that protected them, the humans were forced to withdraw.
Still they had given a good account of themselves and had gotten the better of the exchange. The Frost Giants raised a cheer as the humans withdrew safely to their lines.
In close quarters it was the Frost Giants who had the advantage of reach and not from their size alone. The trolls wielded axes against twelve foot spears and longswords. Also the giants were a trained militia, able to execute the difficult maneuver called a passage of lines where their front line fighters stepped back as the second line stepped forward between them and took their places. That pitted fresh giants against tired trolls.
There were over four thousand trolls against fewer than fourteen hundred giants but each giant was worth two trolls. Clouds of arrows flew between the armies. The trolls deployed more bowmen but the humans had a much larger supply of arrows. They kept firing even after the trolls ran dry. Their round shields could stop an arrow but could not shelter every part of them all the time. The arrows of the humans took their toll.
The battle surged back and forth, neither side gaining any clear advantage. The giants took heart. A stalemate would amount to a victory, since the trolls would have to withdraw, leaving the giants in possession of the field and the town. The Fyrd could draw reinforcements from a population of fifty thousand. The trolls had to win this key battle for the capital or lose the war.
Then the troll reinforcements arrived. The second column was two thousand strong and threatened to roll up the giants' line. The giants disengaged, pulling back as both armies paused to reassess the situation before maneuvering for a final confrontation.
At that critical moment a tremendous clap of thunder shook the battlefield as a giant eight feet tall stepped forward all alone, armed not with a spear nor a sword or but with a war hammer, and protected by only light armor: a buckler, breastplate, vambraces, and leather gauntlets their backs covered with overlapping steel scales.
Proportioned for a Frost Giant, the hammer's hardwood haft was a yard long and thicker than a human could get a hand around. It was made of resilient ash which was wrapped with straps for greater strength. The head was as heavy as that of a sledge but with cheeks that tapered to small faces front and back to concentrate the force of the blow.
The giant raised the hammer to the sky drawing lightning bolts to himself but taking no harm from them. Electricity crackled all over his body and his armor as he cocked his arm and threw his war hammer at the general in charge of the main body of the invaders. The hammer flew across the intervening space while small lightnings playing across its steel head. When it struck, the general's body exploded in a cloud of blood and gore and bits of leather and metal.
The general was not the only troll to fall to that first hammer throw. The hammer blasted a swath through both ranks of the enemy host before slamming into a tree.
As the trolls let out a collective moan, the giant called out the name he had given to his war hammer, a name celebrated in song and story.
"Mjolnir!"
Then all watched with mouths agape as Mjolnir the Mountain Crusher, the war hammer of the legendary Thunder God flashed back into his hand. He held it high in triumph as lightnings played all around him, then directed further bolts from the sky down at the trolls, killing anyone who looked important. Between lightning bolts and further hammer throws he killed dozens of trolls.
The trolls did not know what to make of it all, but the Frost Giants certainly did. They could see with their own eyes that in their hour of need a great hero had arisen among them, a mythic figure from the days before the old galactic empire. Harald Sigurdsen, the war chief of the Frost Giants, lead the cheers.
"Thor! Thor! Thor!"
The giants felt like they were in the presence of an avatar, as he seemed to be, of their thunder god of yore, though many recognized him as none other than Finn Ragnarson. His magical gift had finally manifested itself conferring on him powers shaped by his memories of the old tales he had heard as a youngling. That was often how magic worked on Haven.
Taking heart from this sign, the Frost Giants reengaged the enemy, not only with edged weapons but now with fire globes just then brought up, which wreaked havoc among the trolls. The flaming oil clung to their clothes and armor as it burned, literally cooking them alive. The stench of burning hair and flesh joined the miasma that arose from the unwashed bodies of the trolls.
The troll reinforcements tried to take the giants in the flank but they had waited too long to make their move. Instead of attacking they found themselves under attack as the Navy fell on them from their own right flank.
The naval infantry and landing parties of sailors had maneuvered into an advantageous position behind a Concealment raised by the two war wizards. It wasn't that difficult even with troops untrained in marching under concealment since the attention of the trolls had been on the battle between the giants and the main body of the trolls. No one was even looking their way.
Commodore Van Zant sensibly stationed himself with his reserves behind the forward edge of the battle line as he orchestrated the attacks of the naval infantry and the contingents from the various ships in his squadron. At one point the trolls rallied and pressed hard against the naval forces. Van Zant showed then that he really did swing a mean cutlass, personally cutting down three trolls and saving two of his men.
The battle grew disordered from that point on, with no one really in control. Clusters of fighters surged back and forth. One powerful cluster formed around Thor, that is Finn. Fighting now at close quarters with trolls in front and giants to either side, Finn had no room either for lightning bolts nor hammer throws, though his body and armor still crackled with electricity making it perilous for any foe to grapple with him, as more than one troll found out.
Finn wielded his hammer with his right hand, maneuvering a buckler in his left to fend off blades. Now a buckler is of little use against arrows but Finn had nothing to fear from them either. As big a target as he was, arrows simply swerved away from the giant as Finn used the magnetic field of the planet to make them miss. Mjolnir took a fearsome toll of the trolls, shattering the blades of their axes and smashing through the shields of the trolls to crush their chests or break their shoulders or take their heads off.
Another cluster formed around the commodore and his two war wizards, Braeden the firecaster from the flagship and Liam of the Petrel. Braeden directed streams of flame at the enemy or cast great clinging balls of fire at compact groups. Liam either yanked the eyeballs out of the trolls' heads or flashed his steel spheres back and forth to smash through the heads and bodies of the trolls. At one point the commodore saw an opportunity and had the wizards cut loose with white fire to scythe a swath through dozens of the enemy opening the way for an attack by the naval infantry.
And yet a third cluster formed around a diminutive red-headed human who 'shadow boxed' his way through the ranks of his enemies, scything them down with flashing steel spheres, his back and flanks protected by a bodyguard of Frost Giants led by by his good friend Old Arn.
The trolls finally disengaged, then joined forces still nearly three thousand strong and formed up on high ground back from the river. By then the number of effectives among the allies was only about twenty-four hundred. Still the allies had done better than the trolls had. Giants could take more punishment than trolls, so they lost three combatants to wounds for every one killed outright, whereas almost all of the fallen trolls were dead.
It looked like more grim work ahead with a heavy butcher's bill still to pay, but then trumpets sounded the charge of the Commonwealth cavalry. Wild cheers rose from the throats of the giants, the archers, and the Navy, as they watched three battalions of lancers, more than 1200 men, ride the trolls down from behind. No sooner had they cut their way through the trolls than the Frost Giants closed with those who were left. It was a massacre.
Afterwards the cavalry and humans in their archery wagons chased down those few trolls who tried to flee. None got away. The defeat of the invaders was total, as was the victory of the defenders.
Chapter 8. Aftermath
"Drew!" Finn cried happily as he embraced the diminutive red-head who had played so valiant a part in their victory. "I am so happy to find you still in one piece."
"If I am it is entirely thanks to Arn here and to his men who protected me. The battle was so furious, I devoted all my energy to offense and did not raise my Missile Shield, which wouldn't have done me much good anyway fighting as I was at close quarters against trolls armed with axes. Arn and his men kept me alive."
"You should have seen our young friend out there. The smallest fighter on the field of battle but the one with the biggest heart." Arn assured Finn.
Ever the inquisitive journalist, Drew said:
"So I gotta ask, Finn, what happened to you? How did you become the avatar of a thunder god?"
"Obviously I am not an avatar of a god, much as I like the sound of that. No, I am still Finn Ragnarson. I woke up this morning with a full realization of my transformation. My powers arise from a magical gift manifesting in an unusual way. The magic drew on my memories of the old tales of the Aesir, the gods of the Norse. Hence my powers are a weird variation on gifts like magnetism and throwing lightning bolts or maybe weather magic and my strength is doubled from energy drawn from the sky. I may not be the biggest of the Frost Giants, but I am now the strongest."
"How do you work those tricks with the hammer?"
"Well the throw itself is fairly normal. I fling the hammer by main strength with an assist from the leverage of the haft, so it carries farther than a crossbow quarrel and nearly as far as a bowshot. To some extent I can guide it using the magnetic field of the planet. Now I cannot send my hammer whirling in all directions like you do your spheres. I just make its path deviate a little left or right, so I don't miss. I also make sure it rotates just right to hit the target business end first. Retrieving Mjolnir is straight-forward enough. Magnetism attracts iron and steel and I can concentrate the effect on a single object."
"Now when I call lightning bolts they don't flash from me to the target as with those who throw lightning bolts, but I can call a strike from the clouds or even from a clear sky. I don't really need the hammer for that. I raise it to the sky for dramatic effect."
"The upshot is that I am endowed with a facsimile of the powers of a mythic hero from our past."
"Wow! What a story! What a scoop! Bestseller and third Writers' Prize here I come."
. . . . . .
"We meet again Liam. Last time we saw each other you were an inoffensive coach-boy whom I befriended. Yet you have repaid me by alienating the affections of my boyfriend Drew Altair. You and another boy, this Axel Wilde, the third member of a threesome openly sharing rooms as lovers in the capital." Finn noted.
"Unfortunately for you, Liam, I am very much the jealous type." Finn growled. "You are courting doom, foolish mortal."
"Ah, but Finn or Thor or whatever you call yourself. Thanks to druidical healing magic I am no longer mortal in the ordinary sense of that word. Nor am I any more foolish than you for falling in love with Drew Altair, a splendid boy who is certainly worthy of more than one lover. What I am is a powerful war wizard of the Commonwealth. Which is why I won't be meeting my doom any time soon."
"So you can drop the histrionics, my large friend." Liam added.
"I know perfectly well that with you feigned jealousy is a very old joke and a regular part of your schtick."
"Damnation! He has unmasked me, Drew. What now?"
"As one of the heroes of Flensborg as well as the battle at sea, Liam bears the tattoo of a Giant-Friend. What choice do we have, Finn, but to offer him hospitality and welcome him to our bed?"
"Sounds like a plan", the Frost Giant cum Thunder God agreed.
. . . . . . .
"There is another message for you sir." Liam said to Dekker. "It also came over the Army heliograph."
"I hope it is more good news."
The last message from the Admiralty earlier in the day had reported a successful fleet action against a force of trolls twice as large as the one that had been crushed at Flensborg. The First Sea Lord said they could not be sure whether this force was a second wave directed at New Varangia or was headed for some other target.
The fleet had deployed a reinforced squadron to leeward of the longships hidden behind a Concealment that made them look like a clutch of helpless fishing boats. The trolls took the bait only to find themselves trapped between the squadron and the main body which had the weather gage on them. The capital ships ran many of them down, ramming and sailing right over them.
Each of the capital ships of the fleet was armed with four ballistas, two on the foredeck and two aft plus catapults to lob clusters of fire globes in a high arc to fall on the enemy. These were particularly useful against the cargo ships the trolls had seized to carry provisions and supplies. By ship action alone they devastated the enemy fleet. Then came the turn of the mages.
The fleet had only one war wizard with the flagship but its capital ships bore teams comprised of at least three mages drawn from weather wizards, water wizards, firecasters and fetchers, a variation on the teams with each field army. The job of the weather wizard was infrasound communications, weather predictions, and stand-off combat by raising a waterspout. The firecaster burnt the enemy vessels. As for the fetcher, he dropped ballast stones from a height or flung them in a flat trajectory at the hull of the enemy vessel, aiming at the water line. Two or three such holes would sink the largest vessel.
Water wizards raised waves in pairs against groups of longships, catching them in the trough between converging waves which crested and broke over the enemy vessels driving them to the bottom.
Very few longships had escaped. The rest of the creatures had been killed or had gone down with their vessels with modest losses to the High Seas Fleet. The trolls had swarmed aboard two frigates and slain their crews to a man. In revenge the firecasters on the capital ships set them ablaze as a funeral pyre for their heroic dead.
Commodore Van Zant's squadron had been ordered to return to base at Alster to replace its losses in sailors and naval infantry.
"I am afraid the Admiralty requires an acknowledgment before you read this one, sir."
"Really? That is highly irregular."
"NeverthelessÉ"
Mildly puzzled, Dekker shrugged then said:
"Very well, Liam. If the Admiralty wants an acknowledgement on receipt, so be it. Make to Admiralty from CS Petrel, Captain-Lieutenant Jan Dekker, commandingâ"
"I'm sorry sir," Liam interrupted, "but that's wrong."
"What is wrong?"
"What you said just now."
"I don't understand. I am Captain-Lieutenant Jan Dekker, am I not?"
"No sir, you are not. You are Commodore Sir Jan Dekker, Knight Commander of the Inland Sea, and Sword of the Commonwealth. That's what is says right here in this dispatch," Liam said, handing it to Dekker to read.
"Congratulations, sir!" Lieutenant Dahlgren enthused. The others seconded the motion with "Hear, hear."
Crawley nodded, then said as an aside:
"A two jump promotion, a title, and the top medal. I think that is about right. Though they really should have made him a peer while they were at it."
He spoke just loud enough for Dekker to hear but not so loud that the senior officer couldn't pretend he hadn't. The two of them had come up together, since the day a newly commissioned midshipman Dekker had reported for duty aboard the brig Aurora.
"And sir," Liam added, "If I may presume to give a superior officer a word of advice. When the time comes for the award ceremony, just thank the Admiral and be sure to laugh at his jokes."
Dekker started to smile at his own joke being handed back to him then set his features in a frown.
"You know Liam, I have read this dispatch twice now, but I don't see where it said I had to acknowledge receipt before I even looked at it."
"Actually sir, I made that part up," Liam admitted, "to set up my little joke just now."
"Harrumph!" Dekker growled in largely feigned umbrage. Pointing an admonitory finger he said:
"We'll let it goâ this time!"
His eyes twinkled as he said it, but the steel in his voice let Liam know he must never again take liberties with Dekker's communications.
"Uh, sir if I may, you once expressed a hope that my friend Drew Altair would help the Navy get some good press."
"Hasn't that already happened with those dispatches he sent to the Capital Intelligencer? And I know the Admiralty will have already have released my report of our earlier battle at sea, so the story is already in the papers."
"Yes sir, but Drew's reports on the Battle of Flensborg are only the beginning. Drew has another bestseller in the works, an entire book about the campaign against the trolls, at sea as well as on land. He intends to interview all who took part. He'll do Ensign Lathrop's interview when he returns to the capital then travel to Alster to get the story from those in the High Seas Fleet."
"Naturally his account will give due credit to the Fyrd of New Varangia and to its human allies and to the Army, but the Navy's part here was just as significant if not more so, your own role especially, if I may say so, sir."
"That is something of an exaggeration, isn't it Liam? As captain of the Petrel I can fairly claim credit for our first victory at sea. It was a spectacularly successful single ship action against an enemy flotilla, but I did sit out the land battle."
"Yes sir, but it was you who made our victory in that battle possible. You saved New Varangia!"
"How so?"
"You were the one who put it all together, the man who brought all our forces together. You remembered a casual remark I made on the flagship about how the local paper in Flensborg had a weather wizard on its staff. Then you got the idea to pool the strength of all six water wizards in the squadron to reach that man with infrasound and warn the Frost Giants and the Army."
"I should have seen it myself, weather wizard that I am, but the fact is that I didn't. Thanks to you the Frost Giants and the Army mobilized in time to unite with our naval force in the climactic battle. The way I see, you were the indispensable man and the real hero. And I am sure Drew will portray it that way too."
"You aren't trying to flatter me, are you Warrant Officer Liam?"
"No sir. Not at all. Everything I just said you yourself know to be true. But I am trying to extend an olive branch, as it were, for my lapse just now."
Dekker nodded and said:
"Olive branch accepted."
Liam beamed.
Author's Note
This story is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead.
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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.
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