Elf Boy's Friends

Elf-Boy's Friends 28

Jumper

by George Gauthier

[The further adventures of characters from the novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends']

Chapter 1. An Appeal for Help

"Pardon me sir for interrupting you at dinner, but a dispatch rider has just arrived from Army headquarters in Dalnot."

Taitos Klarendes, Count of the Eastern March, accepted the letter proffered by his steward. As he scanned the document, the diners seated around the table held their peace though consumed with curiosity. The Count was not long back from the war in Amazonia. Surely he would not be recalled to the colors, not so soon.

"It is not addressed only to you my lord; the dispatch is addressed to all of you: Sir Aodh, Lord Artor, and the three druids as well."

"Gotta be bad news then." Aodh affirmed, a sentiment which was seconded by the count's first-born son Artor.

The three druids, Dahlderon, Owain, and Meirionnydd were seated opposite Klarendes, while his son Artor, and the elder Klarendes' shapeshifter spouse Aodh flanked him. They had all just sat down to a big meal. Among country folk, the midday meal was called dinner and was always the most substantial meal of the day. Supper was typically a light meal of cold meats, cheese, sliced bread, with dried fruits for dessert.

Having just finished martial arts training and practice bouts the druids and Aodh were still nude or skin-clad, their hair wet from a quick shower. Outstanding exemplars of youthful male pulchritude, the boys practically glowed with physical fitness, good health, good looks, and sex appeal.

Even more than most young males in the Commonwealth of the Long River where nudity taboos were weak to non-existent, both elves and shape shifters typically went about skin-clad. More than just a way of dealing with the tropical climate, in their secluded vales the practice kept young elven males readily available for sexual congress with older males. For shape shifters it was really a matter of convenience. They never had to worry about where they had left their clothing when the shifted to their animal forms, not when they were naked to begin with.

The steward threw an appreciative wink at his employer's tiny spouse. Standing five foot zero and weighing only a hundred pounds, Aodh was small, skinny, and smooth muscled. Impossibly pretty, he was a melding of the innocent and the wanton, the epitome of a boy in the full bloom of his youth with ivory skin like porcelain that never tanned or burned in contrast to the young druids who were uniformly bronzed from constant exposure to the sun.

Though Aodh seemed utterly fragile and vulnerable, the epicene youth was actually three times as strong as he looked thanks to his innate magical nature and the help of the New Forest. Large green eyes dominated the stunning face of the androgynous youth which tapered from a wide brow down a pert nose to a narrow chin.

As for the druids, they hardly looked like three of the most powerful wielders of magic on the planet of Haven. Short and slightly built pretty boys with the sculpted musculature of athletes, dancers, or acrobats, they could easily pass for a pack of rent boys on a day off.

Only they weren't really boys, not chronologically. Dahlderon was the youngest; the raven hair elf-boy was in his twenties though he looked to be more than a decade younger, say sweet sixteen going on seventeen. Next came Owain; the diminutive strawberry blond human might look no more than eighteen, but he was only three years short of the two century mark. Merry was the most senior by far, over a thousand years old most of it passed in the form of a unicorn during his second life till his transformation a decade ago back into the elf-boy he had been in his first life. His hair was white as snow, the same color his coat had been as a unicorn.

Klarendes scanned the brief document, then looked up at those seated at the table.

"It seems the Army wants all of us drop everything and go to the capital. We are being sent to Amazonia to deal with a problem, though what just what kind the dispatch doesn't say." Klarendes told them, passing the document around for all to read.

"Why so mysterious?" Aodh asked.

"What other reason than security?" Artor answered. "A dispatch may pass through many hands as it is carried by heliograph and courier."

"All right, but why call on us druids to deal with it?" the elf-boy cum druid Dahlderon complained. "However long it takes, the Commonwealth and its allies are sure to win a prolonged war in Amazonia. The Commonwealth can raise armies from a population of one-hundred thirty millions counting its new dominions in the Far West and allies. That allows the High Command to rotate new regiments to the front indefinitely."

"The trolls in Amazonia number about three million counting females and whelps, and they are cut off from the far-off oceanic archipelago from whence they came. Meanwhile the anti-fertility plague which we druids unleashed there will, in time, drastically reduce the population from which they might draw reinforcements, eventually ending the threat permanently. We druids took care of the long term problem with trolls. Dealing with the problem in the short and medium term is the province of the military."

Owain seconded that sentiment, saying:

"Surely they don't expect us druids to join the forces at the front? It's the job of war wizards not druids to serve as force multipliers for conventional military forces. And these days the wizards have the help of numerous mages the Army and Navy have recruited: fetchers, water, air, and earth wizards, firecasters, and so on. We helped there too, enhancing the vitality and longevity of many to give them long life and careers and thereby increase the cohort of war wizards."

"Besides, the allied contingents under General Urqaart seemed to have things well in hand at the end of our recent tour of duty." Aodh noted.

Urqaart commanded an army drawn from the lands in the Far West recently annexed to the Commonwealth plus its allies on the shores of the the Great Inland Freshwater Sea. Over half of these formations were soldiers trained to Commonwealth standards by the Army of the Far West and the professional army of the former Despotate of Dzungaria. Mercenaries too were deployed but behind the lines in garrisons and to protect lines of communications.

Operating for the first time on the same side rather than as foes and flying the flag of the Commonwealth of the Long River, the forces from the Far West had given a good account of themselves against the trolls whose attacks on their territories had provided the final reason for the former enemies to bury the hatchet. That had accelerated political, social, and economic reforms which laid the foundation for a permanent peace, mounting prosperity, and their accession to the Commonwealth.

An expeditionary force drawn from the orcs of the Eastern Mountains but trained, equipped, and paid by the Commonwealth had also joined the fight. The orcs had been promised an independent country of their own to accommodate their growing numbers in lands they might conquer from the trolls. Their ranks had been augmented by orcs emigrating from the territories of the eastern barbarians attracted by the dream of a land of their very own.

Klarendes and his spouse Aodh had recently thrown their powers into the fight in support of Urqaart's offensive which drove the enemy out of the western third of its conquered territories. Time after time Klarendes had destroyed enemy fortifications and shattered shield walls enabling breakthroughs which lead to encirclements and battles of annihilation which destroyed two entire field armies. Talk about acting as a force multiplier! Urqaart had nominated the count for the second highest military decoration, the Shield of the Commonwealth.

Klarendes was one of those with the rare ability to throw white fire [the subatomic plasma at the heart of a star] and to keep at up again and again. War wizards could throw white fire too -- but only two or three times before they had to rest for a day to recharge their magic.

Aodh's service had been noteworthy as well. While attached to the command group, the shapeshifter had thwarted a suicide squad of fifteen trolls who had laid an ambush for Urqaart and his staff. In his human form Aodh unleashed his sonic weapon to incapacitate the trolls then morphed into a black panther armed with poison claws and killed every one of the fifteen would-be assassins as they staggered about, their hands over their ears, dizzy and disoriented from the intolerable screech Aodh had directed at them.

"Anyway, why did they ask for me?" Artor wondered. "We Hands are not in the military at all. Our job is criminal investigation and law enforcement and general troubleshooting."

Klarendes shook his head. "The dispatch offers no specifics about the problem which prompts this summons. It might not even be military in a narrow sense, though obviously connected with the war there. That could explain why they asked for you, Artor and why it is signed by the Chief Hand himself, Baron Jarmond. After all, you Dread Hands are the designated trouble shooters for the Commonwealth and endowed with plenipotentiary legal powers. Solving problems is just what you Dread Hands of the Commonwealth are for. "

"Tomorrow is more than soon enough to find out." Owain opined. "First we druids have one last section of the New Forest to visit as part of our annual survey of its health and development. If we leave right after dinner we can open a portal, step though, check around, and be back in time for a late supper."

His colleagues nodded, with Merry saying as they walked out: "See you guys later."

After breakfast the next morning, Owain opened a portal to the capital. The group stepped through it then sought out the headquarters of the Dread Hands of the Commonwealth, to give them their full title.

"Thank you gentlemen for coming so promptly." Jarmond began. "No doubt you have been wondering what problem could possibly need the talents and powers of two firecasters and a shape shifter, plus three of the most powerful magic wielders on the planet, four counting Count Klarendes' capability with white fire."

"Make that five of us." Sir Willet Hanford said as he stepped into the room in the company of his young aide, Sir Axel Wilde. "We war wizards are no slouches in the magic department either, as you know very well Baron Jarmond."

Jarmond inclined his head to concede the point. Druids and wizards were both gifted with an ability to wield many sorts of magic, though the two orders of mages took different approaches to the magical arts. The magic of druids was oriented toward the living world, while that of the wizards more toward inanimate physical reality with some overlaps such as control of weather.

Jarmond picked up where he had left off.

"It seems that the Commonwealth has received an appeal for help from a most unlikely source a woman who calls herself the Queen of the Amazons. She asked for you by name, Lord Dahlderon."

"That wouldn't be Lady Seerah, would it?"

"Yes, that is the name, Queen Seerah."

"When I knew Seerah she was first among the five on their ruling council. So she has taken a crown, eh? Very likely it's a political tactic to prop up the regime so as to cope with the revolution I unleashed on her society. Which should make me the very last outsider she would want to return there."

"What can I tell you Lord Dahlderon? Desperate times make for strange alliances," Jarmond said. "When an enemy is at the gates, especially one like the trolls with genocidal intentions, then past differences can be overlooked. That is the way I read it."

"Very likely you are right, Jarmond."

"The puzzled look on Axel's face prompts me to remind him and everyone else about what happened back then" Dahl continued.

"To make a long story short, Axel, years ago, when I was only a journeyman druid, I traveled far up the Amazon River in search of a biological control to stop an invasive species threatening to destroy the forest cover and watersheds of the Ashokan Archipelago."

"I found it too."

"It turned out to be a climbing vine, an epiphyte, a plant which merely clings to its host trees for support and access to sunlight but is not parasitic and draws no sustenance from them. In its native habitat the epiphyte kept the Emerald Ash Borer in check so it was only a minor pest, not a plague as it became in the islands. Once transplanted to the Ashokan Archipelago, the epiphyte saved the forest cover and watershed of crop lands that supported a hundred thousand people. They were a decent and peaceful folk I came to know and like until the trolls exterminated them as if they were vermin a dozen years later."

Dahl explained that the land of the Amazons was then a country oppressed by an unnatural, cruel, and alchemically maintained social and political order. The women used a concoction of herbs during pregnancy to ensure that females were born much larger than their diminutive male counterparts

The herbs delivered powerful drugs via the mother's placenta to the growing fetuses which kept males not only small but youthful and under-developed. The males could perform sexually well enough to procreate but they never really grew up or filled out, remaining boys on the cusp of true manhood. For instance, Amazon males never grew a beard. It was an example of neoteny, the retention of juvenile features in an adult.

Hence the males were kept in a state of political, social, and sexual subjugation, virtually enslaved, though they could not be sold as chattels, and kept perpetually naked, their genitalia ringed to prevent unauthorized erections and sexual contact.

In the dozen years since then a slow but inevitable revolution had started which, over three generations, would re-make that country, letting all its inhabitants, both male and female, live their lives without the unnatural sexual dimorphism that had led to so much coercion, oppression, and inequality.

"That was what you hoped would happen, Lord Dahlderon," Jarmon said. "But now the trolls are pressing against their borders. So far it's just reconnaissance in force, but a full invasion must soon come. Hence Queen Seerah's appeal for help."

"There is a vast hostile territory and three million trolls between our armies and the country of the Amazons. What help can they expect from us?" Klarendes asked.

"Not large military forces, obviously. "Jarmond replied, "No, what they need is combat magic, something they are sorely lacking."

"Of course!" Dahl said in sudden realization. "Gifts useful in combat are much more common in males than in females. By stunting the development of their males, the Amazons deprived themselves of potential war wizards, firecasters, fetchers, and so forth."

"Almost certainly by intention." Sir Willet pointed out. "Males with powerful magic gifts would never let themselves be controlled by non-magical females, whatever their comparative size and strength."

"So when do we go?" Axel asked,

"Since I have been to the land of the Amazons, I could open a portal and take us all there directly." Dahl said.

Jarmond shook his head. "You first need to check in with Urqaart at his headquarters. That is also where you will collect the rest of your party, namely the twins and Count Klarendes' nephew Corwin, who is there as a war correspondent. He will keep the journal of your expedition as well as report for the Capital Intelligencer."

"Just as he has been doing for Urqaart's campaign." Artor pointed out.

"Corwin's reportage is a must read." Axel enthused. "He often inserts himself into the action, fighting alongside the soldiers whose exploits he portrays."

Klarendes nodded.

"Headstrong and reckless that boy may be, but he is also courageous and very effective with his ball lightning. A natural horseman from growing up on the Eastern Plains, he often rides with the cavalry. In one fight the battalion of lancers he was with got cut off from the main body by enemy cavalry. He used his new explosive technique to blast a path through the enemy then lead a headlong charge to get them into the clear. That earned him a Mention in Dispatches."

After further discussion, the party of mages dispersed to equip themselves for their expedition to Amazonia, which would leave in two days' time. It was agreed that Owain as the senior druid would be in charge. Artor might be a Hand of the Commonwealth, but Amazonia was out of his jurisdiction. Not so with the druids whose jurisdiction was global.

Chapter 2. Powers

General Urqaart frowned skeptically as Owain outlined their plans.

"Do you really think a bunch of women soldiers can stop the trolls?" he asked pointedly.

"I am the only one who has seen them fight," Dahl said. "Don't sell the Amazons short because of their gender. They are big and tough and well-trained and well-lead with officers who know what they are doing. Also they will be defending familiar ground and will have had plenty of time to prepare for the onslaught."

Owain argued that they had no choice but to try. At the very least the Amazons would divert some of the military forces now facing the Commonwealth and make their own advances easier. At best, both forces might actually put the trolls into a squeeze play.

"Our party numbers only eleven, but that includes six of the most powerful magic wielders on Haven: three druids, myself, Meirionnydd, and Dahlderon, Count Klarendes and his son Artor with their demonstrated mastery of white fire, and Sir Willet, one of our strongest war wizards."

"Then we have the war mages: the twins Jemsen and Karel, earth and air wizards respectively. Aodh is a master of close combat thanks to his sonic weapon and poison claws. Finally Corwin Klarendes has proven how effective he can be with his ball lightning."

"Where are the twins anyway?" Axel asked. "I thought they'd be meeting us here."

"Held up somewhere, I imagine." Urqaart said. "I'm sure they'll be along very soon now." then suddenly added: "In fact, here they come now."

"As I live and breathe," Aodh said, as the twins breezed into the room, "it's the famous twins Jemsen and Karel, in the flesh!"

"Hey, that's my line!" Karel protested but with a big grin, then embraced his friends.

"Ahem! I'm here too, if anyone cares to notice!" Corwin grumbled, drawing winks from his uncle Taitos and cousin Artor.

"At least you blond boys are at full strength. I only wish I had the support of my fellow red-heads, Drew and Nathan." Axel said plaintively.

Axel was a boyishly cute copper-topped lad with heart melting dimples, Drew Altair an auburn haired beauty, and Nathan Lathrop a true carrot-top with the lissom build of an elf though he was of entirely human stock.

"It's my turn to be the war correspondent for the Capital Intelligencer," Corwin pointed out. "And Nathan is back on the Petrel which is currently in Alster. And Liam is there with him on rotation back to the Navy and to the comforts of civilization."

After acknowledging the byplay, Sir Willet made a further point:

"There is one mage you have overlooked, which is not surprising since his existence has been a closely held secret for the last few months. Sir Axel Wilde is no longer just my aide, he is now a powerful war mage in his own right. Repeated passage through space portals stimulated the manifestation of a very rare magical gift."

"Axel is a Jumper."

"A Jumper?" Urqaart asked. Sir Willet nodded.

"Axel can teleport himself to anywhere he can see, whether with his own eyes or through a far-viewer. With repeated jumps between hilltops he can cover hundreds of miles in a matter of hours. He can also jump directly to any point, no matter how distant, which he has previously reached via a portal. That is why my colleagues and I have been opening portals for him to strategic points around the Commonwealth: Grayling, Dalnot, Bled, Alster, the Western Plains, Plainsville, Flensborg, Caerdydd, Junction City, Jenova, Brax, and so forth. Axel can now jump directly to any one of those places then make further visual jumps from there."

"All right, but what can he do once he gets wherever he is going?" Urqaart asked, ever the pragmatist.

"Why don't I let him answer that? Axel, my boy, you're on." Sir Willet said warmly.

Axel smiled and launched into a description of what he could do with his new powers.

A jumper made the perfect assassin, able to pop into existence next to an enemy general, kill him, them jump to safety before his guards or soldiers quite realized what was happening, though for safety he would wear light armor. Axel carried a vial of Aodh's poison to coat the blades of a pair of push or fist knives, a weapon with a T shaped handle attached to a very short triangular blade. One small cut would deliver enough poison to kill a troll twice over.

A jumper was even more effective operating at night, which would mask what was happening and generate terror among the enemy. He could even peek through a window and jump into a room or tent to kill his target then jump away, leaving the enemy's servants to find him dead in the morning.

Also a jumper could carry others along with him. A simple touch on the shoulder would establish a connection which let him carry a small group with him. And it worked not only for those he himself touched or who touched him but for those in contact with them. (After that the connection was too weak.) Thus a jumper could deliver a raiding party anywhere he himself could jump.

Or Axel could jump behind a foe, touch his shoulder, jump a thousand feet into the air and let go, allowing his enemy fall to his death while he himself jumped to safety. And as with fetchers like Liam, in naval combat he might drop boulders to hole enemy vessels or incendiaries to fire an enemy fortress.

"How much weight can you lift?" Jemsen asked.

"It is not really weight so much as size. At the upper limit I can jump with something as big as a house. Understand, I don't really lift against gravity. One moment something is one place, the next moment someplace else."

"And it doesn't matter what it might be connected to. As long as I visualize a clean break in my mind it just separates and jumps with me. That makes for another form of assassination: just tap the head of a foe and jump a foot or so away and let it drop, then jump into the clear, leaving head and body behind as a gruesome reminder of what it means to attack the Commonwealth of the Long River. For extra effect, sometimes a decapitated body stays upright very briefly and even staggers about, as the heart pumps blood from the jugular arteries. Talk about terror tactics!"

"Whatever happened to that gentle boy we all knew and loved, Axel the Peacemaker we called him?" Karel asked only half-facetiously.

"I could answer that it was war and adversity, but it was not only that. Actually what I described just now I got out of books and reports in the Institute library. I haven't had to use such grisly tactics. Not yet. Anyway, you and Jemsen and the twins are also Peacemakers, but that hasn't made you any less effective on the battlefield. And what was that you once told me when I felt uncomfortable about how easy killing seemed to come to you? You told me it was OK because we were the good guys. Now in this war the trolls we are definitely the bad guys."

"You've made your point." Karel conceded. Axel then added:

"I would also like to use my powers in civil rescue work like jumping persons trapped by fire or flood to safety. With my gift I would be the first responder, able to get to disasters faster than anyone else. Even if my own powers are not particularly well suited to the particular rescue I could bring others such as fetchers and firecasters with me when I jump to the scene."

"Oh, and don't forget that Axel can Call Light to englobe the head of a foe and scramble his brains. He has saved my life twice doing just that." Sir Willet added.

With that kind of endorsement, Axel sat up straighter clearly proud of his gifts and what they could do to support the cause.

"And let me point out a new or rather a strengthened ability of my own," Sir Willet said, "I have trained with Sir Angus McFarden's techniques to increase my control of magnetism. It is now easy for me to sweep caltrops off a field much as we saw that cavalry rider do in that demonstration of the close ground support several years ago."

"Now I don't have anything like the sheer power of a true master of magnetism like Sailing Mater Crawley of the Petrel. Did you know that he once sank two troll longships by tearing the nails out of their hulls? The vessels fell apart and the trolls manning them dropped into the sea to be dragged under by the weight of their own armor."

"And not to brag, but, as a war wizard, I am also a powerful fetcher, which lets me wield steel spheres to deadly effect and to fly through the air plus I am a weather and water wizard, and a firecaster with mastery of heat and flame. And I have acquired magical skills like Concealment, long distance communication with infrasound, and the ability to open portals."

"He throws white fire too." Axel offered.

"And what can we expect from you druids. I've never seen any of you in action."

"We have. That is Axel and Karel and me and Sir Willet." Jemsen said. "During our expedition to the Barren Lands or South Varangia, as the frost giants are calling it now, we came upon a dreadful scene of a company of trolls tormenting a small group of brontotheres, one of which they had butchered for its meat."

"Now all of us took part in that fight: a score of frost giants, half as many human archers, a war wizard, a druid, and even an avatar of a thunder god, but that was by courtesy of our druid who could have killed the trolls all by himself."

"Which would have been selfish and unsportsmanlike of me." Dahl pointed out. "The others would have felt left out if I had just exerted my will and made the trolls deathly allergic to the brontothere flesh they had just eaten."

"We druids are strongest with life magic and our control of the living world. We can flash grow vines and motile runners and creepers to wind around the lower limbs of our foes and hold them fast or around their necks to strangle them. This was a variation on the very trick Owain had used so long ago against rogue Frost Giants. Alternatively we might create thorn breaks between their vanguard and their main body to facilitate defeating a foe in detail. Druids can blight crops and forests and poison any creature with the contents of its own stomach."

"For a less lethal approach we can put enemies to sleep or calm the fiercest beast. Indeed we can control animals and set them on our foes. Nothing like a pride of lyons or a pack of dire wolves to take the heart out of your foes."

"Don't forget brontotheres," Artor reminded him. "The charge of a herd of brontotheres is nigh unto unstoppable. It is not for nothing that they are called the juggernauts of the jungle."

"I could hardly forget my first time as a rider of brontotheres, when I, a naked teenage druid, rode the matriarch of the herd in a charge against an army of Amazons. We druids are also good at reconnaissance. We can project a portion of our consciousness into the minds of eagles or any other creature which let's us see what they see and hear what they hear."

"Also any druid worthy of the name has a command of earth and weather magic plus Mind Speech, quadrupled strength and stamina, keen senses and super fast reflexes. We can actually snatch an arrow out of the air, or, against an arrow storm, create a kind of missile shield whereby we transform the wooden shafts into dandelion seeds. And we can open space portals."

"Oh, and besides his druidic powers, Merry retains some of his unicorn powers such as extremely powerful Mind Speech, Calling Light, Kindling Fire, and unmatched stamina, though he no longer has that killer neigh of his."

"Don't worry." Aodh interjected. "I've got that covered", which was a reference to his own killer screech.

"Aren't you druids fetchers as well?" Karel asked. "What I mean is that we have all seen that you can levitate just like Drew or Sir Willet. Which suddenly makes me wonder why you cannot also fly like them by Lifting a wooden yoke the way Drew or Sir Willet or Liam can."

"Oops! It looks like we might finally have to confess our innocent bit of misdirection, Owain," Dahl said.

"All right. The fact is that we druids are not fetchers at all. And for the record we never actually said that we levitated by lifting our sandals. That was your idea, Karel, yours and Jemsen's, and an inspired idea it was too -- for fetchers. No, we druids use an aspect of earth magic when we levitate."

"Earth magic!! Jemsen said, astonished. "I myself am an earth wizard, but I haven't the faintest idea how to use my gift to lift myself into the sky, which seems entirely backwards, for an earth wizard, I mean."

"That's no doubt the reason you never thought of it. It's like this," Owain explained. "Fetchers lift themselves by pulling upward on their sandals. We druids, push the planet away from us to with a force you might think of as gravitational repulsion. Naturally the planet is too massive to budge. Instead we rise into the sky because we are pushing against the planet with greater force than its gravity pulls us toward it."

"Wow!" the twins breathed. "Does this mean Jemsen could do it too?"

"Er... maybe. When we have a moment, let's get together and give it a try. For druids it's not so much a learned skill as an instinct."

"All right!" Jemsen exclaimed, driving a fist into the air.

"Good luck brother, but don't forget I can take to the air too, whether inside an whirlwind or calling a jet of air to push those batwings, however clumsily."

"And you both can run like the wind pushed by a jet of air at your backs called by Karel's powers as an air wizard." Axel said. "Me too. I can go along for I have the doubled strength and stamina and fast reflexes of a druidically enhanced physique, and I have practiced running with you. Do the rest of you know that we three can sustain a pace of a mile a minute for half and hour or more?"

"I'll keep that in mind." Owain said. "Our diverse capabilities will surely prove useful in meeting the challenges we will face in stiffening the army of the Amazons in their defense of their embattled homeland. We'll keep in touch with you General Urqaart via Mind Speech. Dahl and I can reach clear across the continent while Merry can reach anywhere on the planet as long as it is someone we know."

Chapter 3. The Amazons

Two days later the party of eleven stepped through a portal created by Dahl to the large square in front of the palace in the capital city of the Amazons, a fair sized town really. A military parade was in progress, with battalions of infantry and cavalry and support troops passing in review before the Queen and the members of her governing council. All the soldiers were large women who looked to be tough and well-drilled. The logistical forces were male.

Trumpets brought the parade to a halt as all eyes turned toward the strangers. A high official left the reviewing stand and hurried towards them, the soldiers parting to let her through. They watched with hope on their faces, correctly surmising that the humans and elves who appeared in so magical a manner must those their queen had sent for.

Nevertheless, to establish their bona fides, Owain gestured dramatically to create a break in the low clouds to let a shaft of sunlight fall on the travelers. Onlookers took that as an augury of good fortune. Surely these figures bathed in light were demigods sent to succor them in their hour of need.

Addressing Sir Willet, whom she took to be their leader, she told them:

"Welcome strangers. I am Lady Vannsetta, Chair of of the Governing Council. May I know your names."

"This is our leader." Sir Willet said indicating Owain who was standing at his side.

"Excuse me. I just assumed that the most senior of you would be in charge, or if not you then this gentleman of noble bearing with you", meaning Count Klarendes

"Don't be fooled by appearances or the touch of gray at my temples. Lord Owain is a druid. He may look like a teenager with head of lustrous strawberry blond hair, but he has nearly passed the two century mark. I myself am little more than a quarter his age. And the studly teenager with the snow white hair has lived for a thousand years, though only the last decade or so as an elf-boy. Before that the druid Meirionnydd wore the form of a unicorn."

"Remarkable. That would explain why his hair is the color of fair weather clouds, which is how we describe what some folk compare to snow, something unknown in this country."

Owain took it from there and introduced the members of their party. After which Lady Vannsetta lead them into the palace for a meeting with the queen.

She received them cordially.

"I greet strangers whom I trust will soon become friends plus one who is not a stranger at all. Hello Dahl. You haven't changed a bit in a dozen years. But then druids don't age, do they?

"No we don't my lady. Nor, it would seem, do Amazon queens."

"Thank you for your gallantry, Dahl, but I expect our troubles have permanently engraved worry lines on my visage."

"That is why we have come, to ease your worries by countering the impending attack of the trolls. I have to say that I expected a degree of hostility from you, given my role in upsetting your social order."

"Not just our social order. You touched off a political, economic, military, and cultural revolution."

"Of course I was furious at first and dismissed the letter you left behind to explain and justify your actions, though I never blamed you for destroying the battalion my headstrong and cruel daughter set upon you. Whatever our grievances with you, she had no call to slaughter the innocent crew of that logging barge or a servant I myself had set free and to whom I had granted safe passage to the outer world."

"In time I came to accept the inevitability of change and to prepare for it, to adjust as best we might. I had hoped for three generations of peace for my people to make the inevitable adjustments. That was not to be. Now our society has become militarized to a degree I regret but accept as necessary as long as the trolls threaten our very existence."

"But you all must be tired from your long journey. Please accept the hospitality of the palace. Lady Vannsetta and the steward will show you to your lodgings where you may refresh yourselves. Later, at dinner, we shall talk and get to know one another and try to establish trust and confidence among us. Tomorrow is soon enough to confer on the strategic situation and on how your Commonwealth might help us."

Actually the travelers weren't tired at all. Stepping through a portal let them avoid the fatigue of long distance travel. Nevertheless, they withdrew from their audience with the queen and repaired to the suite of guest rooms placed at their disposal to bathe and change from their travel garb to their dress uniforms.

The connected suite of rooms were simply but comfortably furnished and featured large windows looking onto a well-tended rose garden. A water closet and shower room were en suite. The accommodations came with a pair of pages, Hylas and Hakkon, cute red-heads in their mid-teens who stood ready to provide any and all services that might be required, which the guests understood to mean the pages were also available for sex.

Like all youthful males in the land of the Amazons the page boys were nude though without the gold rings that would once have constrained their manhoods.

For the benefit of the pages Axel ran down the names of the eleven guests ending with: "And these two fabulously sexy blonds would be the famous twins Jemsen and Karel."

Stumped looks appeared on the cute faces of the pages.

"Er sir, no offense, but what are these twins famous for?"

That brought an "Ouch!" from Karel while in answer to their question Jemsen pointed to the three small blue tattoos on their left shoulders.

"We are the only humans alive to bear tattoos certifying us as to be elf-friends, dwarf-friends, and giant friends all three, hence persons to whom all three races will automatically extend their hospitality and protection."

The pages shrugged.

"We don't have elves, dwarves, or giants in this country, sirs, only humans.

Karel and Jemsen looked so chagrined that Corwin burst out laughing. After a moment the twins saw the humor in the situation too and joined in, though their laughter had a distinctly rueful tone to it.

"I hope you are not going to mention this in your reporting Corwin." Karel told him severely.

"I cannot believe that you are asking me to violate my journalistic integrity!" Corwin gave back with feigned umbrage.

"And as for you, Axel." Jemsen told the wizard's aide. "Just forget that any of this ever happened."

"How?" Axel asked breezily. Tapping his head he added "Eidetic memory, remember?"

The twins slumped crestfallen and deflated till the pages cheered them up by promising to come back later to "turn down" the twins' bed.

The travelers had chosen the rooms they would take. To the surprise of the palace steward the Klarendes, father and son did not share quarters. Instead the elder Klarendes shared his room and bed with one whom he referred to as his spouse, which the steward realized was a reference to the impossibly cute twink she herself had had her eye on the whole time.

She couldn't help thinking to herself: "Darn! Why are all the supremely cute boys only interested in those of their own gender?" She thought back fondly to the old days when she would not have had to ask.

Another room furnished with two full sized beds accommodated the twins in one bed and Axel and Corwin in the other. The three druids took the third chamber while Sir Willet and Artor perforce were left with the last one, which at least had separate beds. They were after all the only two members of the party who consorted exclusively with the female half of the species.

Later at the appointed time, the visitors went down for dinner looking resplendent in their full dress uniforms.

Dahl, Owain, and Merry donned formal druidic regalia: green tunics, sandals, and cowled camouflage cloaks blown out like wings for dramatic effect by a discreet zephyr Owain called up for the purpose. The trio stood before the queen and struck the most imposing figure possible for pretty boys little more than five feet tall, standing with their feet shoulder-width apart, theirs staffs braced next to their right feet, the long shafts angled away from their bodies and gripped near the top at arm's length.

Sir Willet thought their stance was a bit much, too melodramatic for his tastes but harmless enough. He himself was in his army greens including the leather cuirass with the wooden yoke built into it by which he might take flight. His uniform sported a Combat Mage insignia and badges indicating that he had been Mentioned in Dispatches twice while his sleeve showed no less than three wound stripes earned over the course of long career fighting the eastern barbarians.

His aide Sir Axel Wilde, and newly minted as a war mage in his own right, had seen combat only briefly in the Barren Lands and again in the Eastern Mountains against the orcs but had acquitted himself well enough to earn the Expeditionary Medal for their survey of the Barren Lands and a wound stripe of his own.

At his throat Axel wore an ensorcelled amulet which countered hostile magic. Dahl had one just like it, both taken from beaten foes. It was of no use in a fight against trolls who had no magic of their own though it was just possible that trolls might overcome their repugnance to magic enough to coerce or blackmail human mages into serving them.

The twins too were in full uniform, sleeveless tunics with color coded sashes, green for Jemsen and blue for Karel, with the shoulder pips showing their reserve ranks as captains and badges for two awards of the Military Cross for Valor, the Expeditionary Medal, plus no less than four wound stripes. Even more impressive in most situations were the three small blue tattoos on their shoulders which declared them to be elf-friends, dwarf-friends, and giant friends, though their significance was lost on the locals.

Even Corwin, who looked to be no more than seventeen wore a badge for the Military Cross plus a wound stripe earned during a brief war against the eastern barbarians. Aodh too had won both awards though he never bothered with a wound stripe. What did wounds matter to a shapeshifter who had only to shift to his alternative form to heal all hurts? Only once, after his confrontation with the dire wolf, had he been so grievously wounded that he was too weak to call right away on his magical healing.

Artor wore the buff uniform of a Hand of the Commonwealth with the white kepi with neck flap which was standard headgear for the Dread Hands. Klarendes himself wore his uniform as captain of the local militia. That uniform boasted a badge for the award of the Shield of the Commonwealth, the second highest battle honor the state could bestow. As for the young shape shifter, Aodh wore his forest ranger uniform sporting a camouflage pattern based on Sir Willet's research: brown with splotches and slashes of green and black.

All of the mages sported ribbons for the various wars they had served in: the Troll War, the First and Second Centaur Wars, or the First, Second, and Third War for the Eastern Plains.

None of them carried weapons nor did they need to. They themselves were weapons.

Queen Seerah sat at the head of the table, Owain sat on her right in the place of honor, and Dahl on her left. Merry, Sir Willet, and Axel were at the far end. The rest were in between alternating with the members of the council and three generals.

The palace cooks did themselves proud. Not knowing their visitors' tastes, they provided a selection of well prepared and tasty dishes to appeal to the most diverse of appetites. As Dahl had remembered from his journey, the Amazons ate little red meat preferring fish and fowl. But there were also dishes based on eggs and beans and mushrooms, and the vegetables were cooked to perfection al dente.

Everyone made a point of avoiding talk of the business which had brought them together. Instead they talked of the changes Dahl has set off in Amazon society.

Since Dahl had blighted the herbs that were the basis of the sexual dimorphism which favored Amazon women, all the males born to Amazons were what on the rest of the planet were normal. Their growth and development had not been alchemically retarded. The oldest of the new males and the corresponding smaller females were as yet only eleven years old. So far the major impact on society was on its child rearing practices. Boys were much more of a handful than they had been before, certainly no longer meek and complaisant and dutiful though none had yet reach their difficult teenage years.

The situation of the adult male population was improved in that the virile members of males were no longer ringed and locked to control their sexuality. That had not lead to any increase in sexual congress that led to births since a good many males preferred the company of their own gender to that of their recent oppressors. Anyway the stunted males were still too small to physically dominate females and would always be too unsure of themselves to act aggressively with the other half of the species.

It was still too soon for the institution of marriage as understood on the rest of the planet to become the norm. That was for the coming generations to work out.

For males emancipation did not yet mean they were wholly free of their labor obligations, but they were no longer corralled in labor gangs under the thumb of female overseers nor were they bullied by enforcers wielding batons who had hitherto kept their sort in line. Mostly they now worked for wages though many still lived in communal housing.

Primary education for males was now compulsory rather than merely allowed. Boys started half days at school when they turned five and left school to the end of the year when they turned eleven. Schooling focussed on basic literacy and numeracy plus a bit of geography and the history of their own country. Literacy was the key to further intellectual development since the public libraries were open to males.

Their education was intended to prepare young males for economic roles different from the unskilled labor, really virtual slavery, they had formerly been consigned to though with their greater mechanical aptitudes males had always worked as artificers, artisans, and mechanics.

The plucky ones might forge a future as independent artisans such as joiners or potters or as shopkeepers, truck gardeners, or food cart vendors, the first occupations that offered hope of economic independence, though there were no legal restrictions on jobs for males except for soldiering.

"I have to give your society credit for embracing change they way you have." Dahl commented.

Queen Seerah shrugged.

"Change was inevitable. You made sure of that. Our best chance was to bend with the wind as the grass does rather than stand stiff and resist like an aged forest giant in a storm which gets blown over. Besides our society was frozen in time and would never have found its place in the new world that the Commonwealth is creating with its magic and modern industrial economy thanks to its progress in natural philosophy and the mechanical arts. Your industrial revolution has not touched us, not yet, though I expect it will once the trolls are defeated and we join the wider world."

As they talked around the table, Dahl and the others came to understand how and why the Amazons had created the unique society Dahl had found a dozen years earlier.

Centuries ago a horde of refugees from the far southeast, mostly female and many pregnant fled from lands devastated by war and depopulated by fighting, disease, and starvation. Those males they brought with them were mostly servants, escaped serfs and slaves and younger boys and a few older men.

The migrants left a trail of dead and broken bodies as they crossed hundreds of miles of indefensible country that any foe might invade and conquer till they found a hidden pass through the Great Eastern Barrier Range. Beyond it lay a pleasant and fertile land, protected by the rugged mountains to the east, by its spurs to the north and south, and by impassable swamps to the west. In any event, the lands immediately downriver were lightly or even totally uninhabited except for the vast numbers of brontotheres who roamed those lands unbothered by civilization.

Determined never again to become subjected to male domination, the ancestors of the Amazons selectively bred their males for smaller size and docility, castrating the aggressive or rambunctious boys or those likely to grow up big and strong. In time their alchemists concocted a more merciful way to cull their natural increase, a potion which acted during pregnancy to produce large girls but small boys. And so the Amazon race was born.

"Our land has long been isolated and protected by the sea of reeds which stretches down to where the upper Amazon breaks through it to flow freely, eventually to reach the Great Inland Freshwater Sea. The swamps also extend laterally, north and south, fed by tributaries of the main river which have formed swamps of the own creating a vast sea of reeds where the waters are too shallow to float a boat and the current too feeble to offer a directional guide, while the soggy ground is virtually impassable on foot, in short a region too wet to walk upon but not wet enough to float upon."

"Then why do you fear the trolls so much?" Owain asked. "Won't the swamps stop them too."

"Unfortunately no. The trolls are our first serious enemy to have both the motivation and the numbers to dig channels through the reeds just as we ourselves did several centuries ago for the narrow canal we use for our modest commerce with the outside world. No, the swamps alone will not stop them, not without an army to stop them far stronger than any we might muster. We Amazons are large and powerfully built as females go but trolls are twice as massive as our soldiers and their fighters number two million though most of those face your armies in the west.

At that point the Queen tabled the discussion till the strategy session the next morning.

The twins did take the pages to bed that night after assuring themselves that the boys had not been ordered to do it or coerced into sleeping with them.

"You don't understand." Hakkon said. "We volunteered. Actually a bunch of us pages volunteered, so the steward had us draw straws. Hylas and me, we won!"

Pointing to his own plumped up member, Hylas said:

"Nothing demonstrates sincerity quite so much as a soldier standing at attention!"

Besides the twins rationalized that they might elicit information from the pages during pillow talk, information the pages would otherwise be on their guard not to divulge. The pages did say enough to confirm a real improvement in the place of males in Amazon society but otherwise had nothing of importance to relate.

Still a good time was had by all. Hylas and Hakkon, both sixteen going on seventeen, were certainly no strangers to male sex, but this was their first tryst with lovers from a society where males had never been dominated by females, so in their minds it was macho males versus the milquetoasts of their experience, though the twins themselves would have laughed at the notion that the label macho could apply to slender pretty boys like themselves. Twinks like them might be many things but never that.

To start with, the four paired off: Hylas with Jemsen, Hakkon with Karel. Later they switched. After the first two rounds the pages wanted something more: to bottom for both twins at once. Halas went first, getting pronged at both ends, his supple body shoved back and forth by strong thrusts of the twins' hips. Then it was Hakkon's turned to be double teamed.

But even that was not enough for the insatiable pages. For the climax, as it were, of their night with the twins they wanted to try a double penetration, that is, a page taking two cocks up his quim at one time. Jemsen and Karel weren't sure that was a good idea, but the pages wanted it so bad, they gave in and agreed.

To facilitate it Jemsen lay supine as Hylas straddled him and settled on his shaft sinking all the way down till it was wholly inside him. Then the page posted like a rider on a trotting mount. Just when they got a good rhythm going, Karel stilled him and pushed him forward to a more horizontal position and took advantage of the way Hylas' taut little body was bent forward. He poked at the page's tight hole and slid his cock in next to his brother's. It was like he was making love to both Hylas and Jemsen simultaneously. Karel went lightheaded with a surge of lust.

Poor Hyalas had never been stretched so far. The double penetration hurt at first but the pain soon faded. He lay still while two males worked at his hole, his body shuddering as their cocks stroked his joy spot. In the fullness of time he came, shooting his spunk onto Jemsen's belly and chest. The contractions of his anal muscles set off his lovers and they spilled their seed into him. Then all three sagged and caught their breath.

Later it was Hakkon's turn, which went the same way except that Hylas did not simply sit still and watch the other three. He stood straddling Karel's head and presented his cock to Hakkon for oral service. The page boy was in heaven taking three cocks at once. Afterwards they all slept together till morning when the pages took their leave of the visitors.

Everyone was sure the pages would report anything they overhead from the delegation so all the Commonwealth folk watched their tongues. Anything of a confidential nature could be circulated among them via Mind Speech.

Anyway the druids were intent on watching and listening through the senses of animals to happenings and conversations not only in the palace but in the surrounding town. Nothing they saw and heard contradicted what Queen Seerah had told them, something which inspired confidence in their new ally.

In the morning, with everyone gathered in a council of war the queen lost no time in getting to the point.

She first described the military establishment of the Amazons, which featured a small standing army augmented by well-trained reserves. It numbered some thirty thousand which was small for a population of five million but not too surprising considering the lack of threats that land had had to face historically, shielded as they were by geographical barriers that discouraged incursions. Across the swamps the land was largely empty, a vast range of grasslands and brush and copses of trees over which brontotheres roamed at will.

The number of females eligible for military service in the reserves continued as before; the new cohort of young ladies were still fully replacing those who aged out. In the last year many had been inducted temporarily and rotated through reserve units for three weeks of initial or refresher training.

Its geography aside, the land of the Amazons was basically indefensible. There were no walls around around any of its small cities. East of the swamps the landscape was flat bottomlands covered with fields and orchards alternating with low rounded hills, the whole of it dotted with small towns.

"When I asked the Commonwealth for help I expected direct military assistance, not the dispatch of less than a dozen males, a group that looks more than a little like a pack of rent boys and their procurers. No offense, gentlemen."

The visitors smiled. "We get that a lot," Owain said, to nods from the pretty boys in his party. As to what we bring to the table, let me pass out copies of Axel's transcription of a briefing we gave to General Urqaart about our magical capabilities."

At Sir Willet's suggestion, Axel had invoked his eidetic memory to transcribe their briefing with General Urqaart, suitably abridged and edited, to give the amazons an idea of the capabilities of the mages without mentioning certain powers they wanted to hold in reserve such as the druids' ability to inflict heart attacks on a score of foes at a time. A formal written description would get a better reception than an oral briefing which might come across to the Amazons as bragging.

As the members of the ruling council read Axel's notes, the expressions on their faces changed from skepticism to wonderment and finally to hope.

"I had no idea," Queen Seerah said, "that males could wield such powerful magic. Even after you showed some of your power by blighting our special herbs and later contacting me via Mind Speech from two hundred miles away."

"Given the circumstances of my departure, I had to reach out to you and explain if not justify to you my course of action, drastic though it was for your people. I also wanted to assure you that the friendship we had formed was very real, not a subterfuge to disarm your suspicions. Deceiving you was one of the hardest things I ever had to do."

"When I told our council that how you had contacted me via mind speech, my colleagues dismissed it as an hallucination born of my regrets and my longing for a broken friendship. After a while I began to doubt it myself."

"Dahl, with the powers I just read of, it is clear that you were never truly in our power, were you?"

No. I might easily have escaped and never suffered the torments your daughter inflicted on me, but then I would have failed in my mission to find a control species for the Emerald Ash Borer and been unable to help the Ashokan islanders. In the end it was you Amazons who found it for me."

Queen Seerah shook her head.

"You suffered so you might help the people in that archipelago you spoke of. How did that work out anyway?"

"The epiphyte did control the invasive insect and does to this day, but when the trolls reached the Ashokan Archipelago they exterminated the entire human population."

"Which will be the fate of all our peoples if we do stop them."

The queen summed up by saying:

"Only now do we realize what we denied ourselves by stunting our own males. Given time we too might develop our own mages to defend us. Meanwhile, we have you."

"Not exactly a ringing endorsement," Sir Willet observed dryly, "but it's a start."

Chapter 4. Allies

Over the next three weeks the Commonwealth delegation and the leaders of the Amazons worked out a strategy to deal with the trolls whose army numbered more than one-hundred thousand soldiers.

The allies' approach had to be very different from that of General Urqaart. The armies advancing on the trolls from the west were huge and capable of fighting a war of attrition because they could draw reinforcements and replacements from a huge population. Which did not mean that Urgaart threw away the lives of his soldiers on frontal assaults. Quite the opposite. The whole campaign was based on the indirect approach via flanking maneuvers and attacks on the rear via space portals which saved many lives but made for a protracted campaign.

The Amazons did not have the luxury of time. What they needed to do was to isolate the army facing them from the main body of the trolls then crush it in a lightning campaign. A defeat on that time scale would encourage the trolls to look elsewhere for strategic depth.

But that was exactly what the trolls wanted to avoid. They not only sought strategic depth in their war with the Commonwealth, they would very much prefer to occupy a settled landscape with fine farms and crops plus and buildings and towns there for the taking, rather than expand into a wilderness whose resources were only potential. So the point of the allied campaign became to raise the price to the trolls so high that they would give up and turn aside toward other goals.

The troll army was building a line of communications and supply to an eventual base camp from which they could dig a broad channel of their own through the swamps. It would be sited considerably north of the existing trade canal where the swamp or sea of reeds as the locals called it was not so wide.

The first order of business of the allies was a campaign of harassment by the mages to disrupt the troll supply lines, degrade troll morale, and whittle away at their leadership.

Though few of the Amazons had magical gifts useful in battle, those who did had been identified and recruited into special teams, triads attached to specific battalions. Sir Willet worked with the fetchers showing them how even their weak gift could be used to blind foes by yanking the eyeballs out of their sockets. Nor did it take much strength to wield steel spheres even if the ladies did not have the stamina of male fetchers to keep it up for hours on end and might wield only one at a time.

The Klarendes father and son trained the few lady firecasters. Females might not be able to throw giant clinging balls of fire but even sphere a yard or a foot across would kill a man and horrify those around him. Setting grass or brush on fire to block or surround an enemy was also something within their capabilities. And even a weak stream of flame might turn a cavalry charge.

Some ladies could throw lightning bolts that would stop a foe's heart or numb his limbs. Others could snap electrum sparks. Under Sir Willet's guidance, they became better at it. Sparks might not seem like much, but it was impossible to ignore the burn and the jolt of an electrum spark especially when targeted at the steel codpieces many trolls wore. Similarly a soldier with his sword arm numbed is effectively disarmed and easy meat for a spear thrust. Bolts and sparks would act as force multipliers, disabling or distracting trolls fighting on the front line at just the worst possible moment for them.

Axel really showed what he could do with his new powers. No longer just a wizard's aide but a war mage in his own right, Axel used a far-viewer tube to pick out targets like infantry and artillery officers then jumped next to them and either stabbed them with his poison push blades or simply decapitated them with a tap on the head and a very short jump an arm's length away. With cavalry officers he sometimes stabbed the horse hoping that in its agony the mount would throw and injure or kill its rider. Otherwise a jab to a leg dig the trick.

Alternatively Axel jumped and tapped an officer on the shoulder to establish contact, then jumped them both into a sky a thousand feet up and let go. As the hapless troll officer fell to his death screaming the whole while, Axel would jump to a position of safety in preparation for his next foray.

Working as a team, Axel teleported the trio of Artor and Corwin and himself into marching camps after the troops settled in for the night. Corwin's ball lighting protected their backs while Artor laid about with white fire, killing hundreds as they slept in their tents. Meanwhile Corwin loosed exploding orbs at the rear of the bivouac. Or the team might hit a supply dump or artillery park and destroy everything in sight.

Jemsen and Karel also went along on nighttime forays. Twice Jemsen used earth magic to open ditches which channeled streams into enemy camps, leaving the trolls soaked and miserable and with their food supplies spoiled and ruined. Jemsen liked to call up whirlwinds to strip away tents just as the gust front of a natural thunderstorm arrived to drench the trolls with rain and pelt them with hail.

Another technique with air wizardry was call up dust devils to scatter burning embers from campfires and watchfires with the aim of setting tents on fire or stampeding horses, especially the heavy draft animals which pulled supply wagons. It took hours for their handlers to round up the scattered stock which were by then too tired and sleep deprived to give their best for a couple of days.

Axel was gratified to finally have strong powers more like those his friends wielded. Despite his promotion he stayed at Sir Willet's side as his aide -- first because he liked the work itself and second Axel cared deeply for his mentor. Sir Willet had become like a second father to Axel, and to Sir Willet Axel was the son he would have liked to have sired.

An important part of an aide's job was to watch his principal's back. Twice now Axel had saved Sir Willet's life by Calling Light to englobe the heads of the attackers. The first had been a tawny panther getting set to pounce on the wizard; the second was a troll lying in ambush. Then there had been that barbarian at the exit to the tunnel, though one of the others might have handled the threat just as well.

All three incidents happened before Axel's major gift manifested, and he became a Jumper and war mage, making him much more effective as a bodyguard. Why if a foe brandished a sword to his mentor, Axel could literally disarm the troll by jumping in, touching his raised arm, and jumping away, taking his foe's right arm with him, leaving the "disarmed" troll to bleed out.

Eike's airguns made Axel that much more effective as a body guard. Constant practice had made Axel a dead shot whether with the carbine version he carried when mounted or the longer infantry version when on foot.

One thing Axel knew for sure. No one was going to get to Sir Willet Hanford -- not while he, Sir Axel Wilde, Jumper and war mage had anything to say about it!

During the preliminary campaign of harassment and interdiction Axel undertook solo missions as a sniper. His power of teleportation made him perfect for the job despite his modest degree of fieldcraft.

Most folks think a sniper is all about marksmanship. Not true. Just as important are fieldcraft and stealth which let a sniper reach positions where he can lie in wait for likely targets to present themselves.

Axel's gift of teleportation allowed him to jump anywhere, even to otherwise inaccessible positions which were useless to an ordinary sniper or spots a sniper dared not use since they lacked an avenue of escape and evasion. A sniper armed with an air gun had to shoot and scoot before the trolls could return his fire with long bows that could outrange his own weapon.

Twice Axel shot engineers in charge of rebuilding key bridges the druids had destroyed earlier in the campaign. Another time, he identified an enemy general not by his insignia which were too hard to make out even through a far-seer but by the way he returned the salutes of everyone he encountered. The fact that he himself initiated no salutes showed that he was the ranking officer there. The enemy must have thought that their base was so far from the front lines and possible enemy observation that they could dispense with the eminently sensible rule against such tattle-tale military courtesies in a combat zone.

Sniping was yet another way for Axel to employ his new gift, one he had thought up all by himself. No one trained him for sniping for it nor had he simply come across in after action reports on the shelves of the library of the Institute of Wizardry and Magic.

Sir Willet initially served as a one man Army Air Corps. He flew reconnaissance missions and harassed and interdicted enemy movements whenever he could. He invoked his powers to collapse bridges, destroy wagon trains, and set supply depots on fire, always careful to fly out of the range or archers.

Then he got the idea of recruiting Amazon fetchers to fly interdiction missions in the autogyros newly put into service in the Commonwealth. Opening a portal to the capital, he arranged for three of the craft and a small ground crew and their gear plus three wagon loads of incendiary weapons to be put at his disposal. He also brought sets of the plans and specifications so that the Amazons could later construct their own autogyros not only for the military but eventually for civilian uses.

None of the Amazon fetchers he recruited was strong enough to fly as he did with a yoke but flying with an autogyro was a whole lot easier. All it took to go aloft was a steady push to impart enough forward motion to the aerocraft to get the rotor spinning and generating lift. The airflow over the aerocraft's stubby wings provided the extra lift needed for the load of ordnance as well as hard points to connect their bomb loads to.

The amazon pilots took to the skies like they were born for it and soon were flying missions by themselves. Sometimes they all went out together: the amazons in their autogyros, Sir Willet, plus Axel who Jumped to a point well above the target and dropped the bombs he had had brought with him.

Nothing could have done more to cement the alliance with the Amazons than Sir Willet's demonstration of confidence in their magical abilities and his willingness to share the Commonwealth's latest military technology so fully. He only regretted not being able to outfit the Amazons with airguns, but the Commonwealth's own army rightly had priority for those weapons. Even with the manufactories going all out, some Commonwealth formations still were armed as in the old days, though in the case of the elven contingents it was by choice. They stuck with the long bow as their distance weapon.

Sir Willet and Axel saw with considerable satisfaction that a genuine bond of comradeship had formed between the female pilots and the male ground crews whose skills they depended on to keep their autogyros flying. Specially selected local males had shadowed the Commonwealth crew till they themselves were qualified to take over not only the prep for flights but also maintenance and repairs. The Amazons had long ago recognized that males had greater mechanical aptitudes so most artificers, artisans, and mechanics were males.

The twins carried on a two man campaign of harassment and interdiction targeting isolated groups of scouts or bands of foragers. Lightly armed and unarmored, off by themselves, and spread out too much for mutual support, such soldiers were easy prey for the twins's ambush tactics. Scouts were the eyes of the enemy while the foragers supplied fresh meat to fill hungry bellies.

Waiting in concealment for the right moment Jemsen and Karel would rush upon their foes. Propelled by a jet of air which Karel called up with his air wizardry and with their movements synchronized by the twins unique psychic link, they ran at a pace of a mile a minute and were on their victims almost before the surprised trolls realized that they were under attack.

The twins slashed at the trolls with kukris whose blades were coated with Aodh's venom, a poison as potent as that found in the spines of the dreaded stone fish. Even a small dose could induce the worst pain a living being could endure without dropping dead from shock. A full dose would kill. Either way, one scratch and a foe was out of the fight, leaving him rolling on the ground screaming with agony and begging his comrades to end his existence to put him out of his pain. The psychological effect on the rest was devastating.

The twins never mixed it up with the scouts and foragers, just slashed and ran. Trolls who tried to parry Jemsen's and Karel's blades found that the combination of the twins' doubled strength and the momentum from their headlong rush quadrupled the power behind the attacks making them impossible to meet anyway.

To counter the threat of the twins troll cavalry quartered the countryside, though with little success. The twins kept on the move. Thanks to their enhanced physiques the twins had tremendous stamina. Given a head start they could run horses into the ground on a long chase, even without Karel's air wizardry.

On two occasions troll cavalry almost closed off their avenue of escape but Jemsen used earth magic to create a trench ten feet deep between them and formed the excavated earth into a berm on the near side. There was no way riders could get at them across such an obstacle, which gave the twins plenty of time to get into the clear.

Aodh went on walkabout prowling areas where supply roads passed through dense woods. The first order of business was to learn the lay of the land, to select spots for ambush as well as reconnoiter routes by which to escape and evade pursuit.

As a stalk and pounce predator, the panther's favorite way to kill was to wait atop an overhanging branch while a supply convoy passed under then drop on the final guard or pair of guards.

Aodh's weight and momentum would unhorse the trolls and the fall would likely stun or injure the riders making it easy for the black panther to nick them with a single poison claw then bound away and disappear into the thick woods. The stricken rider's agonized cries helped cover any sounds Aodh himself made.

Aodh also liked to attack a single horse in a team of four, crouching by the side of the road and swiping the passing equine with his poison claws. The horse would run crazy or rear uncontrollably, very likely crashing the wagon and spilling its contents onto the roadway. The wreckage and the cargo would block the road till they could be cleared away.

Occasionally the escort took up the pursuit. Now a panther could not outrun horses over any distance. Horses were built to cover distance and predatory cats were not, though the great weight of troll riders did slow their mounts considerably.

In such cases Aodh's favorite tactic was to lead his pursuers up a draw which would bunch them up and make them a better target for his sonic weapon. Aodh's purpose was not to kill a few more trolls but simply to get away and continue his raids on their supply lines.

Aodh's human side did feel sorry for the fright and distress he visited upon the poor horses. As for the trolls, if they got away with their lives that was more than they deserved.

With his coat of black fur Aodh was invisible at night as he snuck up and took out sentries. It did the trolls little good to replace single sentries with teams of two. Both were supposed to stay alert their whole tour, but through complacency the pair often traded off and let one sleep for half the night. Anyway even when both were fully alert, Aodh had no trouble dispatching both before ducking into the brush or taking to the trees. Far from helping, the practice of doubling the sentries just made it easier for Aodh to add to his body count.

The three druids focussed their attacks farther afield, not on the field army directly involved in the campaign against the Amazons but farther back on its logistical tail and the follow-on forces that would reinforce that army and help occupy the territories they expected to conquer. Portals allowed them to gate to the scene of the action then get away clean.

One favorite tactic was to visit dry rot on the timbers of the many small bridges troll engineers had erected across the numberless streams and creeks and rivers of Amazonia. They left just enough sound wood to keep the bridge up till wagons tried to cross it. The inevitable collapse from the heavy load caused not only the loss of the bridge, but often the cargo, the draft animals, and the teamsters as well.

Similarly the druids invoked earth magic to heave the ground under the corduroy roads troll engineers had built to carry wagon traffic over soft ground. A corduroy road was constructed in a low or swampy area by setting logs perpendicular to the direction of travel and linking them in place with rails along the side. The bed was often covered with sand for better traction and to pack the grooves between adjacent logs.

Corduroy roads were an improvement on simple dirt roads which were fine for the light traffic of rural life but could not bear up under the heavy traffic of military convoys. Besides, regardless of how many wagons passed along it, dirt roads might turn into quagmires after rain.

Yet even corduroy roads were rough going. Their corrugated surfaces were difficult for animals with hooves to walk on and could become dangerous when logs shifted under their weight. The alternative was plank roads built of hewn boards instead of logs resulted in a smoother and safer surface. Unfortunately they took longer to construct since the logs had to be sawn lengthwise and planks cut from them, work typically done in a sawmill off site, whereas the trees for a corduroy road could be simply chopped down on site and trimmed.

The worst damage the druids inflicted on the roads was less to the logs than to the roadbed beneath. Drawing on the water table below they transformed the road bed into a trough of nearly liquid mud. Troll engineers could not repair that kind of damage unless they could refill the soupy void with gravel. Alas, the stretches of road the druids attacked never had a gravel pit handy, not so anyone would notice after the druids buried a couple that actually were close by.

Owain scored a coup when he gated to a warehouse which stored the troll's supply of axle grease for the campaign. Next door stood the manufactory which produced the grease, an industrial facility taken over after the original inhabitants were put to the sword or rather the axe. Owain ruined the entire stock with an alchemical change, denaturing it, that is turning the semi-solid grease into an runny liquid of no use to anyone.

At a lumber yard he used sawdust from the adjacent sawmill as kindling then set a fire that consumed both the sawmill and the lumber yard in a merry bonfire whose wind-blown sparks caused further consternation.

Maybe it was his past as an equine which suggested the idea, but Meirionnydd infected draft horses with a debilitating but seldom fatal illness that took them out of service for a while. The druids spared the lives of the horses both from mercy and because they hoped to ultimately capture the stock from the defeated enemy and turn it over to the settlers whom the Commonwealth would bring in, especially their allies the orcs who were fighting determinedly to carve out a new land for themselves and giving a very good account of themselves. As mountaineers they would have few draft animals of their own.

Merry might not be able to throw streams of flame or clinging balls of fire like the Klarendes father and son could, but he had the gift of kindling a fire. Only instead of setting a cook fire to blazing merrily, he acted the arsonist and caused a conflagration which engulfed an entire industrial quarter.

The campaign of the mages achieved its aim of isolating the trolls confronting the Amazons from the rest of the theater of war. Couriers would always get through but few supplies or reinforcements.

That still left an army of just over one-hundred thousand trolls preparing an attack on the Amazons. A big battle was shaping up, one in which the mages and druids would really let loose with their powers on the genocidal trolls. A victory by the Commonwealth could mark the beginning of the end of the troll threat to decency and civilization.

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 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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