Elf-Boy's Friends 30
Corps of Discovery
by George Gauthier
[The further adventures of characters from the novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends']
Chapter 1. Autogyros
"Axel, you're back!" Drew Altair cried happily as his roommate, friend, and lover walked into their suite of rooms at their residential hotel in the capital. Seated at his desk in his study, proofing the galleys of his latest book, as always when he was at home Drew was in a state of nature, putting his trim and taut body totally on display, a sensual combination of intellectuality and physicality.
"Hello Drew. Yes, I'm back though it's just me and the twins. Corwin is still in Amazonia. The other three members of the Klarendes clan are in Elysion along with our druid friends. And Sir Willet is resting at home."
"You look like you could do with a good rest yourself, Axel. You are as worn out as I have ever seen you."
"That's true enough, but it is less a physical exhaustion than a tiredness of the soul."
"The horrors of war, eh?"
"Exactly, and I don't just mean the terrible things our enemies did but also what we did. It is worse when you are not just an eyewitness but a participant. I know we had to do those things, and that we are the good guys, but all that killing and destruction isn't easy to live with. Anyway, what have you been up to lately, Drew? Besides working on your book."
"Taking flying lessons."
"Huh? You can fly just fine already with one of those yokes."
"This is with my new autogyro. I am putting it through its paces. The latest model has a stronger rotor and wings for greater lift. The Army Air Corps lets me keep my autogyro at a landing field not far from here so I can use it on official business such as when I am called to duty with the reserves for relief work in earthquakes and floods. Flying gets me to the scene so much faster than conventional transportation. Sure I could fly with a yoke, but that would tire me out just getting to the scene."
"I also bought one of Eike's new model bicycles for local travel for visiting or for fun, but I also ride to office and when on assignment around the capital. It has an improved chain drive, though I can roll it along telekinetically. The twins of course will have to pedal theirs. Yours is stored next to mine on the ground floor, a present from your father."
"Sounds good. You'll have to take me up in your aerocraft. With your strength in telekinesis I'll bet it can go really fast."
"That's true, though I won't use it for anything as frivolous as racing. Like the bicycle my autogyro is a means of transportation, not a toy, a much better way of getting around than on horseback."
Axel nodded his understanding.
Drew was only passable as a horseman. Riding always made his short legs ache from having to stretch them around the barrel of his mount, even with ponies. The fact is that Drew simply did not like horses. They smelled, they sweated, they made the rider work at posting when in a trot, which unfortunately was the gait horses used to cover any real distance. And horses had minds of their own, and dim ones at that. They might startle and rear up, dumping their rider butt first on the hard ground or take the bit in their teeth and go haring off at a gallop leaving their hapless rider hanging on to the saddle horn for dear life, though a fetcher like Drew could always Lift himself out of the saddle telekinetically via the wooden yoke built into his leather cuirass. Bicycles and autogyros were far superior as personal transportation.
Smiling slyly Drew added:
"You'll never guess who is taking flying lessons with me. Two someones actually."
"It can't be Liam. He is on duty with the Navy and Nathan. And Eike may have invented the autogyro, but he cannot propel it. OK, I give up. Just tell me."
"The first flyer is none other than our friend and lover Finn Ragnarson!"
"Finn! A flyer? How is that even possible? Finn's no fetcher."
"Finn uses his control over the planetary magnetic field to push the steel frame of his autogyro. As you know his magical powers have grown stronger over the past few years. And he is physically stronger too now thanks to Dahl and the New Forest."
"Before they left on campaign the druids helped a chosen few establish a psychic connection to the New Forest which changed their constitutions much as with Aodh and Madden Sexton only the Forest and the druids worked most of the magic. These changes include tensile fibers to make bones stronger, denser muscles, more resilient tendons and ligaments, sharper sight and hearing -- the works. Finn's not any bigger, mind you, just stronger, able now to draw even more physical power from lightning without overtaxing his constitution."
"No poison claws or sonic weapons, of course. Finn is plenty formidable already as a Frost Giant cum avatar of a thunder god especially since he can now throw lightning bolts directly at a target not just rain them down from the sky."
"Oh and Thor -- I mean Finn -- has a new war hammer too. It was a gift from the dwarves of New Varangia for services to their community. Finn tracked down renegades who were raiding and looting their caverns. The dwarves forged the steel hammerhead from an ultra-alloy of meteoric iron which they named Uru in keeping with the legend of Thor. It's twice the weight of the old Mjolnir though shaped the same with octagonal faces. The haft is part ironwood for strength and part ash for flexibility."
"What's this about a new hammer?" Jemsen asked as the twins walked into the room. Having dropped their soiled army uniforms in the laundry basket, the twins had showered but hadn't bothered putting anything on afterwards. They weren't particularly trying to be sexy. Jemsen and Karel simply preferred going around skin-clad as their good friends the elves called their clothing free life style.
So Drew had to go over everything again, just as for Axel.
Karel nodded:
"It looks like all of us roommates can take to the skies, one way or another. Drew and now Finn too can propel an autogyro; Drew and Liam can fly with a yoke, I can fly too, though only clumsily with the aid of those bat wing extensions to the yokes, and Jemsen can Lift himself by countering the force of gravity. While he cannot fly hither and yon, the ability to Lift yourself out of trouble can come in handy."
"And I," Axel noted, "can Jump anywhere not already occupied by something solid, like up in the air."
"I wondered about that." Jemsen said. "So on your arrival your body just pushes the air out of your way?"
"Actually I don't push the air aside mechanically with my body as you thought. Instead the magic displaces the air from where I am arriving to the void I created when I teleported. Which is why it all happens so quietly. There is no tattletale sound to give me away, which is important to an army sniper."
"Ah!"
"You never said who else was taking flying lessons with you. And no I won't even try to guess."
"OK, Axel. I'll just tell you straight out that it is Finn's boss, Baron Jarmond.
"Baron Jarmond, the Chief Hand of the Commonwealth?"
"None other. He's a fetcher too, you know."
"Actually I didn't know."
"So fellas, why not come with me to the airfield tomorrow morning? Oh and we'll bring Eike too. He is always happy to explain how his inventions work."
"Fine," the three returnees said, "but why isn't Finn staying here with us?"
"Because he's been Baron Jarmond's house guest during their flight training. If you can believe it those two are getting quite chummy. I am sure though that Jarmond will understand if Finn wants to bunk with us from now on."
"Bunk with us?" Karel asked. "You mean punk us. Don't you?"
Jemsen rolled his eyes while Drew and Axel shook their heads. That was Karel all right, always ready with a quip or a bad pun. And when he wasn't ready then Jemsen was.
The next day the boys rode out to the airfield on Eike's new model bicycles which featured two wheels of the same size, a horizontal frame, and a drive train where the pedals drove the rear wheel rather than the front via a toothed belt which engaged both the drive sprocket under the down tube and and the hub of the rear wheel.
Having the pedals under the saddle allowed for an upright posture which let the rider stand up on the pedals and put his weight on them when climbing steep slopes. Also with the chain drive the pedals stayed in one place compared to pedals on a front wheel that turned left and right when that wheel turned to steer the bicycle.
The residential streets along the way were lined with sturdy stone-built town houses and brick tenements three or four stories high. Shade trees grew out of tree boxes or the larger patches of ground called rain gardens, built and planted to absorbed rain water. Flowers in window boxes and planters were ubiquitous.
A system of aqueducts, sewers, public and private latrines, and storm drains kept the paved streets dry, clean, and mostly odor free, especially since the sharp decline in animal drayage due to the prevalence of bicycles, tricycle cabs, push carts operated by Frost Giants to deliver ice or as ambulances, and delivery vans, canal barges, and street cars powered by fetchers.
Canals and tributaries of the Long River crisscrossed the city dividing it into districts connected by bridges. A short sets of steps at each end indicated a pedestrian bridge while the strongest and widest bridges were for wheeled traffic. Every so often the network of residential streets was interrupted by tracts set aside for amenities like parks, public gardens, schools, palestra, athletic fields, and temples to the various pantheons. Often situated nearby were the red brick dormitories called youth lodges where the town's youth dwelt till they came of age.
Nearly half of the capital's inhabitants were of mostly human stock with complexions ranging from pearly white through peaches-and-cream to light olive though many were tawny from constant exposure the sun, especially the young males. The rest of the populace were elves, dwarves, and giants who resided either in their own districts or in dwellings or at least in homes with furnishings sized to match their dimensions but otherwise intermingled with the other races.
Axel and his friends passed happy school children skipping their way to class, groups of bare-ass youths at the athletic fields engaged in scrimmages or flinging the Gemini Zinger around, artisans and clerks commuting to work on foot, by bicycle, or by fetcher powered street car. Frost giants pushed ice delivery carts. A crowds was gathered at the weekly farmers' market in one district while an election rally filled a square in another.
It was just an ordinary morning really, but it reminded Axel that the Commonwealth was a decent society, one where ordinary people could lead good lives, raise families, and realize the potential of their gifts, natural and magical. It was a society worth fighting to preserve. Seeing all that helped put the horrors of war in perspective.
At the airfield Drew got to show off his brand new autogyro. Its plywood fuselage was shiny red on top but blue grey below to make it harder to pick out against the sky. Its streamlined body and sleek lines showed it was built for speed.
But it was Finn's aerocraft that stole the show. Custom-built and sized specially for him, the first frost giant ever to take to the air, the autogyro had a steel frame and a cockpit large enough to accommodate even Finn's eight-foot height and six hundred pounds of mass. The wings and rotors were longer and stronger too as well as the control surfaces at the end of the tail which controlled pitch and yaw.
Like all personal autogyros it was a two-seater with separate wells for each passenger open to the sun though with a windshield of safety glass to deflect the flow of air. The nose was decorated with a heraldic device consisting of a shield with a hammer dexter and a lightning bolt sinister to proclaim the aerocraft as the personal transport of Finn Ragnarson, avatar of Thor Odinson, thunder god of the Norse, the remote ancestors of the Frost Giants.
"It cost twice as much as Drew's new autogyro," Eike explained. "Though a government grant covered only the price of an ordinary model, Finn chipped in the rest."
"That's right." Finn confirmed. "I may not be as wealthy as you guys, but I am a person of means and that's without counting the handsome salary we Hands are paid. With this aerocraft I am as mobile as you humans are riding horses only faster."
Frost Giants were much too large and heavy for horses. So they had to go on foot all the time or ride in a conveyance.
To get around Finn might ride in a coach driven by a human teamsters but no frost giant ever handled the team himself. It made no sense for a giant to be a teamster. That was simple economics. A team of horses could haul only so much weight, but the driver himself was deadweight, neither a paying passenger nor profitable freight. Better then that the driver be a lightweight human or possibly an elf massing only a quarter or a fifth of a giant, thereby increasing the payload.
That was how Finn and Drew and the twins had met Liam who had started out as as a coachman, a coach-boy really, in New Varangia. The frost giants had invited humans from the Western Plains to settle among them to care for and drive the teams of horses which hauled freight and passengers on the new roads the Commonwealth had built across their new homeland. The nomads of the Western Plains were born to horses.
The only teams frost giants themselves ever drove were the aurochs who drew their plows.
Finn reminisced:
"The only time I was ever traveled mounted was in New Varangia atop that friendly brontothere we named Tyr after the smaller of Haven's two moons. Now there was a mount. Talk about heavy cavalry!"
Karel brightened. Here was a chance to tell his "lancer" joke again, but a small shake of Jemsen's head warned Karel to curb his enthusiasm for the lame quip out of consideration for Axel.
"Finn is getting to be a pretty fair pilot." Baron Jarmond assured them, "though he'll never be able to match the acrobatics of the picked team of the Army Air Corps. Now those boys can make one of these beauties loop the loop!"
"It sounds like you yourself are really enjoying flying, Baron Jarmond." Axel enthused.
"Son, flying is the most fun I've had wearing clothes in... let's just say in more years than I usually care to own up to!"
That brought a chuckle from Jarmond's interlocutors. You didn't often get to see the Chief Hand of the Commonwealth in so informal a setting or with him in so relaxed and jocular a mood.
Tall and lean and with a stern no-nonsense look Jarmond was ordinarily not the most congenial of men though that was partly by design. It went with the job. Jarmond could be friendly and talkative when he allowed himself to be. It was a mark of Jarmond's trust and confidence in Finn that he had set aside the mask he usually presented to the world.
"My powers as a fetcher are modest. I am just strong enough to get myself into the air and fly with one of those yokes, but it is not easy for me. This autogyro lets me fly long and far without exhausting myself."
"Mind you, my powers were always formidable enough in combat. It doesn't take much strength in telekinesis to yank eyeballs out of your opponent's skull or to grab the blade out of his hand to disarm him. And once I learned how Drew whirled a pair of steel spheres as weapons, I added a pair to my own armamentarium. I also like having the ability to soar out of harm's way or zip along the nap of the earth far faster than I can run or a horse can for that matter."
"Now we have three pilots and three aerocraft" he continued. "So who wants to go up for a ride?"
They all did, and so they did, and a good time was had by all. Who doesn't enjoy the thrill of flight, the speed, the acrobatics, and the feeling from on high that you are the lord of all you surveyed? The flight of an autogyro is quiet and smooth and pretty much always on an even keel. Pilots pitched the aerocraft forward only during acrobatics or for an emergency descent. And you never banked an autogyro with ailerons as you would one of the rigid wings which the Navy used for long range patrols. The stubby wings of an autogyro were strictly for lift. They didn't even have ailerons.
Afterwards all of them except Baron Jarmond repaired to one of their favorite restaurants in Twinkle Town, where Konrad Quentin the proprietor welcomed the party of regulars to the Sign of the Whale. In honor of Axel's and the twins' safe return from the war he sent a couple of bottles of sparkling wine to their table, on the house.
Despite his proportions Finn had no trouble finding a seat. Quentin catered to all races, and all that a giant really needed was a larger and sturdier chair. The tables might be a tad low for them. Humans and elves found them a tad high -- that was all. Dwarves found the tables just the right height since they perched themselves atop tall stools. High chairs made for human or elven toddlers were too flimsy for the heavy boned and strongly muscled dwarves.
As always Finn lived up to the Frost Giants' reputation as trenchermen. Which was why restaurants had to charge higher prices for servings sized for giants. Nobody overindulged in alcoholic beverages. Much as Frost Giants liked to cite their hoary proverb that cold beer was surely proof that the gods loved us and wanted us to be happy, that was mostly talk. With their size they could put it away and not show it or even feel it really. Beer was drunk not the effect but for the taste , to complement a meal.
Little guys like Drew and Axel really had to watch how much they drank, especially when the Frost Giants ordered the potent peach schnapps for which they were justifiably famous and which could affect even them.
As they toasted their good fortune, Finn lifted his glass of schnapps and assured his friends that the fiery libation would put hair on their chests and maybe elsewhere.
"Gosh, I sure hope not!" Karel wailed facetiously.
Everyone knew that the healing magic which had prolonged their lives and their youth had permanently suppressed the growth of beard and body hair. All of them prized the smooth and glabrous look everywhere on their bodies, not only on their chests and limbs, but even at the fork of their legs.
That evening Finn brought his gear over from Jarmond's place. He would bunk with the twins. Drew spent the night in Axel's bedchamber. The reunited couple had a lot of time to make up for. Aside from Liam, Drew was Axel's closest friend with the twins not far behind. All of them were lovers though each had other close attachments as well such as Finn with the twins and Drew, Drew with Corwin Klarendes, and Liam with Nathan and Eike, and the twins with Aodh and Dahl.
Axel's and Drew's lovemaking that night was less about lust and sexual release and more about companionship and physical and emotional closeness. Drew might be a social butterfly with many casual lovers, but no one knew better than he the difference between mere recreational sex and the kind of romantic love, the true love they all shared.
Chapter 2. What Next?
"So that was when Sir Willet suggested I talk with you about how I might use my powers constructively."
Axel was explaining to Drew about his recent bout of despondency and how Sir Willet had counseled him to find a constructive outlet for his powers and talents.
"Sir Willet is right about that. I've been to war more often than I care to remember. It comes with the territory as a war correspondent. That's a job somebody has to do to keep the public informed, and since I am good at it, it might as well be me, and that's no brag. I don't sugar coat the brutality of war in my reportage, something my public respects me for."
"Besides all that, I do like to think I have made a positive contribution, not only with my journalism and my best selling books, but also with with rescue work. You get a lot of satisfaction saving victims of earthquakes and floods. When you free a mother and child from a collapsed house that might have become their tomb, well it gets to you. Or even lifting a mama cat and her kittens stranded in the loft of a barn by a flood."
"Most of all I am proudest of being named a Peacemaker. As you know the twins and Finn and I were the catalysts for the process which produced lasting peace and prosperity in the Far West. Our efforts helped prevent a nightmare scenario of decades of war, insurrection, slaughter, and destruction that would have taken hundreds of thousands of lives and left millions destitute amid the ruins."
"You're can be proud of being a Peacemaker yourself, Axel. You were a catalyst for making friends with the brontotheres in New Varangia, the Medkari in the Hot Lands, and the orcs in the Eastern Mountains and now with your brontothere allies against the trolls in the campaign to save the Amazons. So never doubt that you are a good person or that you haven't made this troubled world of ours a better place for good people to live."
"Thanks for that, Drew, but what's next? I'd like to do something positive as with your recurring call-ups for rescue work, only I have no idea what. Any suggestions?"
"Nothing specific, only that I don't think the civil authorities really need a Jumper. These days rescue workers can get to the scene fast enough in autogyros flying from the many airfields that have been built during the last few years, not just for the military but for air mail, passenger air lines, and air freight."
The autogyro had revolutionized aviation. No longer was flying the exclusive province of the military and civilian enthusiasts. The postal service used autogyros to distribute a premium class of mail between between regional distribution points. One very long route linked the Commonwealth proper with New Varangia and the Far West. A much shorter route over the the Great Inland Freshwater Sea served the Scilly Isles, while a third route hopped over the northern end of the Eastern Mountains to the town of Harben, an important terminus of iron-roads.
Stretch versions of the autogyro with broad wings transported eight passengers on flights that cut the transit time to a fraction of its normal duration. More recently companies had used the transports to offer freight service for lightweight, high-value, and time-sensitive cargo.
One example was cut-flowers and starter pots of medicinal and culinary herbs difficult to grow from seed. The elves had created an industry to supply blossoms to the major cities. Flower shops were no longer limited to what grew locally but could offer exotic blooms nurtured by the Green Thumbs elves were famous for. The elves consigned their flowers to auctioneers and florists. The culinary herbs were sold to wholesalers who in turn sold on to green groceries and such while the local Associations of Healers handled sales and distribution of medical herbs, some of which were not only hard to grow from seed but had to be fresh rather than dried.
"Meanwhile" Drew continued, "let's go out for a run. All right we work in offices but that's no excuse to slack off and not keep fit. You never know when we might be sent out to the field again."
"Nor has it escaped my attention," Axel observed shrewdly, "that a run through the park would give you a chance to show off that trim and taut body you love to flaunt."
"And who would know better than a journalist like myself that it pays to advertise?" Drew gave back.
"Which is why onlookers so often conclude that you are a rent boy trolling for custom." Axel said.
"I'd make a good living at it, if I were. You have to give me that, Axel."
Axel just shook his head at his friend's brazenness, but then that was part of his charm, wasn't it? No one ever called Drew Altair a shrinking violet.
With that the boys took off, running slow and easy as they warmed up and then picked up the pace. It was a fine day for a run, sunny but not too hot with a pleasant breeze blowing. The runners loped along the running paths of a nearby park, arms pumping, legs scissoring metronomically, sweat glistening on their glabrous skins. Axel always liked to feel the kiss of the sun's warmth on his bare bum. It made him feel that much more naked and sexy.
The two runners made a striking pair: short, slight of build, boyishly cute, lithe, clean-limbed, hard bodied, and evenly tanned from much time spent outdoors in the nude. Both were red-heads, Axel a copper-top and Drew an auburn haired beauty. Thanks to the druidical healing magic which had enhanced their constitutions the boys practically glowed with good health and sex appeal. They turned heads as they ran past. Both guys and gals did double-takes asking themselves how anyone could be so good-looking much less two someones.
Drew and Axel took that as no more than was their due. It wasn't mere vanity to acknowledge the simple truth that they were extraordinarily cute and sexy. They both would admit to being shameless show-offs, but where was the harm in that? Boys with their sort of good looks practically had a moral obligation to share their physical beauty with the world at large, or so they maintained, only half in jest.
The pair recognized a trio of elven runners they encountered as the wine boys from the Sign of the Whale. Wine boys ran regularly not only to keep their bodies pleasing to customers but also to troll for custom, though only to advertise. When accosted they just told their admirers to come by the restaurant to arrange a tryst.
Wine boys would never do anything so low-class as to duck into the bushes with chance-met males. That sort of thing was for boys of the street. Wine boys were near the top of the hierarchy of rent boys which ran, in ascending order of exclusivity, from street boys, who were often amateurs, to professionals like brothel boys, called boys, wine boys, and kept boys, with elf-boys outranking humans in each stratum since they would stay young and cute and sexy for centuries. Itinerant entertainers like minstrels and acrobats and jugglers who also rented themselves out as a sideline fell somewhere between brothel boys and called boys in the hierarchy.
Like Drew and Axel, the trio of wine boys loved to show off their sexy bodies, which was not surprising. Wine boys were nearly as dedicated to a skin-clad existence as elf-boys and this trio was both. Which was why they didn't own a single item of clothing, and why no one had ever seen them clothed or was likely to. That thought gave their clients an extra frisson of naughtiness, thinking how utterly naked these bodies they grappled with were.
The two groups of runners waved as they ran past headed in opposite directions. The wine boys knew that Drew and Axel were not the competition; indeed the pair would always direct anyone who asked them for an assignation to the Sign of the Whale.
A little while later even while the sun shone bright a gentle rain began to fall. The boys laughed as they ran through the sun shower enjoying the cooling effect of what was only a drizzle. Axel's runner's high had brightened his mood as Drew had hoped. He looked over at Axel and said:
"Don't you just love the feel of the rain on your body? I know I do. It's practically erotic, flowing over me, touching me everywhere at once like a lover with a hundred hands, and making me feel so very naked."
Axel shook his head.
"Shameless!" he chided facetiously.
"Utterly!" Drew agreed, a big grin on his face.
The next day Axel consulted the wizards and mages who worked at or visited the Institute of Wizardy and Magic but were not actual war wizards. These wizards and mages focussed on practical applications for magic in other fields from agriculture to transport to communications. It was this group that had thought of using infrasound for long distance communication and devised the aural version of the code employed by heliographers.
The wizards often trained the delvers who worked for the civil authorities. Anyone intending to excavate in the big cities for foundations or to dig up the streets needed a permit which included an on-site inspection by a delver so the digging would not damage underground utilities or weaken the foundations of neighboring buildings, etc.
More recently air wizards had teamed with industrialists to use air mirrors to generate intense heat for metallurgical and alchemical processes. A parabolic air mirror with a surface as shiny as a mirage could concentrate the heat of the sun onto a very small target.
Solar firing was clean. It generated neither ash nor smoke nor dust and left no alchemical residue behind. It provided steadier heat than that of even a powerful firecaster, and it could be turned on and off with the blink of an eye. If guided through a slit or hole in a refractory shield, the narrow beam could cut shapes out of a steel plate faster than machine tools. The steel plate itself likely had been forged in a crucible heated by sun mirrored solar power.
Air wizards also aided navigation on the the Great Inland Freshwater Sea. Normal winds filled the sails to provide the push to move the vessel, but a jet of air from the port or starboard quarter helped steer it on a more direct course, or bent the course closer to straight when tacking left and right against the wind. That got ships to their destinations faster and let them keep to a published schedule of arrivals and departures, something practical in the past only for ferries across rivers, lakes, or bays.
The Navy recruited air wizards to help steer their vessels tactically in combat or training exercises, giving it yet another qualitative advantage over any potential adversary.
Axel learned a lot about how magic was being used for civil purposes, but Jumpers were rare. Moreover jumpers could only reach points they could actually see, including through a far-viewer. Jumping beyond the horizon took a series of hops between visible landmarks. A truly long-distance jump could be only to a location the jumper himself had once arrived at via a space portal.
But the use of portals was very new. No other jumper had trained as Axel had with war wizards, traveling via portal to dozens of strategic points around the Commonwealth. So only Axel might conceivably set up an instant transport business, but that was not the kind of positive contribution he hoped to make.
A couple of weeks of consulting and research in the Institute's library eliminated a lot of impractical or unappealing possibilities in Axel's mind, but he still had not hit upon a really good idea, the kind that jumped out at you and made you wonder how you had not thought of it right away.
In Axel's case he got that idea from the twins. They suggested that Axel's talent would be ideal for exploration. Jemsen pointed out that there were areas on the continent of Valentia about which little was known except for travelers' tales and sketchy maps. Karel picked up on his idea about exploration.
"Exploration by autogyro! That's the answer to Axel's despondency and to Jemsen's and my wanderlust. Remember we two started out as hunters and explorers. Then, after we hooked up with Balandur and Dahl and Aodh, we crossed much of the continent and later the Hot Lands. And we two lead the epic Long March of the Frost Giants to New Varangia."
"And since those early days," Jemsen continued, "there were our expeditions to the Far West and later to the Barren Lands now called South Varangia. You were with us Axel on that one. And more recently the war wizards took you through a whole bunch of portals, which would provide us a wide choice of jumping off points, you should pardon the expression, for a venture into the unknown. How about it Axel? Are you game? And what about you Finn?"
"Count me in!" Axel enthused. This would be history's first exploration via autogyro and with a jumper along as well, though I am not sure just what my role would be."
"First off you would transport the whole team, the autogyros, and the supplies to the er, jumping off point, again no pun intended." Karel said. "Also you can jump anyplace you can see, right? We won't always be able to land our autogyros every place we want to examine close as in dense forest cover. So you could jump yourself and maybe another of us down to the ground. Also a series of short hops would make it easy to thoroughly examine an area much faster and without effort or sweat. And your powers would be handy in a tactical situation to jump us out of danger. Look how effective your powers were against the trolls."
"Count me in too," Finn said, "One benefit of being a Dread Hand of the Commonwealth is the leeway we have to pick our own assignments. Many of them anyway. This is just the kind of off-beat job we Hands relish. These days Jarmond pretty much gives me a free hand."
"My presence will make the expedition an official venture letting us charge expenses to the state exchequer. True, the cost would be trivial compared to the financial resources any one of us commands, but an official expedition could enlist the aide of officials and let us use public facilities like airfields and hangers, visiting officers' quarters, local transportation and so forth."
"I trust nobody will object if I appoint myself the commander of what we should call our Corps of Discovery."
They all shook their heads. Finn was a natural leader and more important, their leader. And didn't he look the part. Physically imposing, he stood eight feet tall and weighed six hundred pounds. And despite his well-deserved reputation as a trencherman, none of that was fat. And thanks to his enhanced constitution and the strength he could draw from lightning, he was three times stronger than normal. Finn might not be the largest of the Frost Giants, but he was far and away the most physically powerful.
Jemsen pointed out that there must be unsuspected mineral resources out there which just begged to be discovered by an enterprising delver. And wouldn't you know it, one such was one hand, or rather an earth wizard, namely himself. His powers could not only find and identify buried ore bodies but bring samples up to the surface for proper analysis later, in an alchemical laboratory. And since Axel knew his way around an alchemical lab he would analyze the samples.
Travel by autogyro would also let the team map and sketch the landforms from their vantage point in the sky, dropping down from time to time to survey the underlying geology.
The twins also realized that the maps and terrain sketches they would draw during the expedition would allow them to expand the geographical coverage of their successful line of maps and guides for commercial travelers and tourists, a steady moneymaker over the years.
They might even gather enough material for another one in their popular line of field guides. Published under their imprint Gemini Field Guides, each volume described some aspect of the natural world. So far the imprint had issued guides on land navigation, tracking, landforms, tree identification, song birds, raptors (eagles, hawks, and owls), social insects, and edible wild plants. The subject of the most recent guide was the identification and care of ferns, cycads, and bromeliads, decorative plants near and dear to their hearts.
Written and illustrated with maps and drawings by the twins, the field guides were printed on sturdy linen rag paper for durability but with soft covers and in a small format that let readers slip them into a pocket or pack. In a sense the guides were the fruit of the endless questions the insatiably curious twins had plied their sometimes exasperated interlocutors with over the years, offering the excuse that questions where how you learned things not written down in books. Now they were, at least on the subjects covered by their field guides.
The twins were the only members of their circle without a formal job. Nevertheless and despite their wealth they had no use for idleness. Leisure, fun, and frolic were all part of a good life to be sure, but they needed to be balanced by work, accomplishment, and adventure. In between their many expeditions and missions they worked long hours in their study at compiling, writing, drawing maps and illustrations, and revising galley proofs. In between such short-term writing projects they continued gathering material for a biography of their mentor the late great Balandur. To do him justice would take more than than a single volume to relate his many adventures during a life that spanned a millennium including four centuries as a Dread Hand of the Commonwealth.
Finn raised an issue no one else had thought about, pointing out that their company of adventurers would share the standard ten percent royalty for any mineral rights discovered on public lands.
"Friends, even with only one part in ten divided among all of us, there are fortunes to be made out there! We'll all be rich!"
"We already are." the twins chorused. "Or hadn't you noticed?"
"Our team should do more than just explore for minerals." Finn continued. "This would be as much a diplomatic mission as an exploratory or mapping expedition. We should visit the Medkari in the Hot Lands, a number of elven vales, the caverns of dwarves, and the League of Independent Towns strung along the Trade Road in the northwest. We might even push all the way to the shores of the Northern Ocean."
"And as usual," Drew noted, "I'll do double duty as the keeper of the expedition journal and as a reporter for the Capital Intelligencer. When we get back I'll write a book about our adventures. I'll use your phrase Finn as the title: Corps of Discovery, which not doubt will be another bestseller and make us famous!"
"We already are." the twins chorused. "Aren't we celebrated everywhere as the famous twins Jemsen and Karel?"
"Not quite everywhere, not where we three have just been." Axel reminded them. "Or is that memory just too painful to recall?"
Abashed, the twins fell uncharacteristically silent.
"Oh? Would one of you three care to explain?" Drew asked. "I sense a story here."
"All right", Axel agreed. "I'll tell you how the famous twins got taken down a peg, but only if it's not for publication."
Chapter 3. The Corps of Discovery
The twins and Finn Ragnarson along with Drew and Axel and Eike were seated around a table in a conference room at the Institute of Wizardry and Magic talking over the plans for their expedition. A short while later they were joined by the two forest rangers, the shape shifter Madden Sexton and the elf-boy Dylan whom Drew and the twins had recruited for the expedition.
That left only one late arrival -- Liam. When he finally strolled in he waved and said airily:
"Hi fellas. I just flew in by autogyro. Headwinds slowed me down, but no harm done. It seems that I am only fashionably late after all."
"Glad to have you with us Liam," Finn said for all of them. "Now I knew you could fly using a yoke to Lift yourself, but I hadn't heard that you had trained on an autogyro too."
"I have." Pointing to the wings on the chest of his uniform, he explained. "I took flight training both at the naval base at Alster and at sea, flying from one of the Navy's new aerocraft carriers, as they are now calling them. I've gotten to be a pretty fair pilot, if I do say so myself."
"Fine, we've needed a third pilot, and now you are it. Thanks to Eike, I'll be piloting my specially built autogyro with the twins in the passenger seat. It has a steel frame, and since the cockpit is sized for a frost giant, there is plenty of room for two slender human youths in back."
Eike enthused:
"It was actually Finn's idea to fly an autogyro with magnetic propulsion rather than the telekinetic powers of a fetcher. This opens up a whole new market for autogyros: masters of magnetism. And just like with fetchers, you don't have to be particularly powerful. All is takes is a push to get the air flowing over the wings and spinning the rotor. That is what provides the lift. Well, the wings also help there too."
"Now Drew I expect you'll write an article on Finn and magnetic propulsion. My company will soon advertise autogyros with steel frames to those whose gifts give them control of magnetism. There aren't so many of them as fetchers but that's still a good sized market."
"Sounds good." Karel said. "At the same time you should write an article in your journal Magic describing how Jemsen and I got the druids to come clean about how they levitated. I'll bet lots of earth wizards would like to levitate with gravitational repulsion."
"Maybe it is time for a whole book about the development of flight, from fetchers lifting their sandals to yokes and rigid wings, to autogyros with magnetic, telekinetic, and counter gravitational propulsion. A complete account can only burnish the credentials of all the Pioneers of Flight: you twins, Axel, Nathan, and Eike."
"Let's add Finn to that list. It was he who thought up magnetic propulsion." Axel proposed. Everyone nodded. Eike said he would mention it to Admiral Van Zant who would get the ball rolling to make it official.
"So our expedition will comprise three aerocraft: Finn's custom job with the twins in back, Drew in his speedster with Axel as his passenger, while Liam can take up one of the new cargo transports with the rangers in the passenger cabin. The transport will also carry our supplies and equipment plus tools and spare parts."
"What about a mechanic?" Liam asked.
"Ideally it would be me." Eike pointed out, but the spoilsports in the Navy won't let me out of their sight. They tell me that I am too valuable to risk in the wilds."
"And we're not?" Liam asked but only rhetorically. Liam understood perfectly how important Eike was to the future of the Commonwealth. What might the young tinkerer not invent over the next half millennium or more.
"Which is why I have personally trained Axel in the care and maintenance of my autogyros." Eike concluded.
Finn resumed his scrutiny of the forest rangers. He hadn't met them before but was impressed right off by their demeanor and what Drew had told him of their backgrounds.
Dylan was a dark- haired lad graced with the pretty-boy good looks and willowy physique typical of elves. He had left the sylvan vale where he had come of age to seek adventure, though not too so much he was ready to march off to war. So he had taken a job as a forest ranger. Elves made good rangers. Their woodcraft was unsurpassed. Many of those who left the vales worked as hunters or trackers or hired out as scouts for the military or as wilderness guides for hunters and tourists.
Dylan had the gift of Unerring Direction which helped not only with land navigation but also with his archery. Then there was his gift of empathy which was a big help in law enforcement and would let them better gauge the people they encountered on their travels. Dylan's empathic sense would detect covert hostility and treachery.
Dylan and the twins were good friends and lovers. The ranger had immediately bonded with his fellow hunters and woodsmen Jemsen and Karel. Dylan after all was an elf and the twins were elf-friends with all that implies: going around skin clad as often as possible, same gender sexual orientation, and a physical beauty beyond the norm.
It wasn't just a case of sexual attraction though that was a big part of it. Dylan and the twins were just the same sort of people. And since they could looked forward to centuries of youth, they hoped theirs would be a lasting friendship.
The three youths certainly looked good together. Dylan was taller than the twins and darkly handsome with the glabrous skin, lithe build, and smooth musculature of his kind. Dark eyes twinkled over the killer cheekbones characteristic of his race. For their part the twins were a pair of palomino colts who exuded good health and sex appeal.
His partner was something else. A ruggedly handsome human looking to be no more than thirty with brown hair and a physique like Finn Ragnarson's only scaled down to six feet, Madden Sexton was powerfully built and massed two hundred fifty pounds of muscle and bone and sinew. Definitely a tough customer, he was a man who could clearly hold his own in a fight whether in his human form or when he morphed into his animal shape.
Sexton was a wir or shapeshifter much like Aodh except he transformed into a wolverine, a predator with an outsized reputation for toughness and ferocity. Thanks to his psychic connection to the New Forest Sexton had reconstituted his physique, giving him stronger bones and tendons and denser muscles as well as the ability to see body heat. With three times the natural strength for one his size, Sexton was as strong as a normal Frost Giant.
During a career of three centuries mostly spent on the eastern continent of Karelia he had been variously a soldier of fortune, a successful general, a courtier, and a gentleman farmer with estates and noble titles.
At that point Liam spoke up and asked:
"So when do we leave and where are we headed?"
"That's just what we were talking about. One thing is settled, the jumping off point. Axel will teleport the whole expedition to Grayling. From there we will take to the air."
After considerable discussion the group concluded that the first stage of their expedition proper would be a survey of the northernmost range of the Eastern Mountains. That region was not part of the New Forest. The northern edge of the hawthorn hedge which marked its border ran along a high cliff, the southern wall of a deep but narrow gorge on the far side of the mountains.
Next they would cross the Hot Lands and visit the Medkari and see how they are doing. At some point the adventurers would visit the League of Independent Towns whether outbound or on their return and stop at elven vales and the labyrinths of dwarves.
The boys put the rangers up in the guest quarters of the enlarged suite of rooms they all shared at a residential hotel in the capital. Their three leased suites had been altered and combined into a single suite for the eight of them: the twins Jemsen and Karel, Drew Altair, Axel Wilde, Corwin Klarendes, Liam, Karl-Eike Thyssen, and Nathan Lathrop. Finn stayed there too when in town though not in the guest quarters. He usually shared a bed with the twins or Drew and occasionally with Liam though not yet Axel, Nathan, Eike, or Corwin.
At supper at the restaurant on the ground floor, the eight members of the expedition plus Eike chatted, which helped Finn get better acquainted with the rangers.
"Of course I know of you both by reputation." Finn said. "You forest rangers have made quite a name for yourselves, taking down the murderous robber gang called the Vanishing Bandits and then the ring of poachers which trafficked in brontothere horns, not to mention your valiant defense of that mountain resort against rampaging orcs."
"The Sign of the Bow it was called. That was mostly Madden's doing." Dylan said diffidently. "He was both in command and a a powerful close-quarters fighter as well, especially when wielding that fearsome Morningstar of his or the mighty bow for which the resort was named. I was just one archer among many."
"Ah but you are an uncannily accurate archer according to the twins, thanks to the gift you all share of Unerring Direction. Don't sell yourself short, Dylan, just because you cannot match the raw power of a major magical gift, you will still be pulling your weight.
"It doesn't matter how powerful you are as a fetcher or earth wizard like Jemsen or an air wizard like Karel who can incinerate a cavalry regiment with sun mirrors. That kind of power doesn't protect you against treachery or deceit. We all can be poisoned or knocked out by drugs in food or drink. Or persons of ill intent might lie to us or misdirect or lead us into a trap."
"The clues I get from my own ability to see changes in body heat are ambiguous. As a trained interrogator yourself you know that subtle clues like a rush of blood to a man's face might be from anger just at being questioned or suspected. When a man blanches and his face cools he might only be recalling an embarrassing incident or has suddenly realized that someone he cares about might be the guilty party. Only empathy is reliable and only then with the kind of training you have had from your shire reeve dad plus that keenness of mind for which you are well-regarded."
"That is why we are counting on you and your empathic gift to protect us."
"Thanks, Madden." Dylan said brightening. "I hadn't thought of it that way. So OK, you can rely on me."
"I know I can. We all can."
"Er, Liam," Sexton ventured. "I don't know a lot about the military establishment of the Commonwealth of the Long River but am I right that those two badges on your uniform indicate that you have won its two highest awards for valor?"
"That's right, Lord Sexton. This green one indicates the Shield of the Commonwealth which I got for my actions during the frigate Petrel's unprecedented single ship action against a flotilla of troll longships. More recently they gave me the top award, the Sword of the Commonwealth, indicated by the blue badge. I won that for destroying a troll relief force which was about to fall upon two regiments of Frost Giants from behind."
"Liam took three arrows doing it, hence the trio of Wound Stripes on his sleeve," Axel explained. Axel wore a wound stripe himself, while Jemsen and Karel wore four each.
"Don't forget his new tattoo." Drew said pointing to the small blue tattoo on Liam's left shoulder. "That marks him as a giant-friend, a person to whom all giants will automatically extend their hospitality and protection."
"I see a lot of friendship tattoos in this company. You yourself Drew are a giant-friend and the twins are famous for being not only giant-friends but also elf-friends and dwarf-friends, all three, the only living humans to bear that distinction."
"When you think about it, you really have to be alive to earn all three, don't you? Tattoos are never given to the dead unlike military decorations which can be awarded posthumously." Karel told him.
"As the Sword nearly was for Liam." Axel declared fervently.
"It was a close thing then, Liam?" Sexton asked.
Liam nodded and conceded:
"It doesn't get much closer..."
"Since I had thrown white fire no less than four times, I was too spent magically to hold a missile shield or to open a portal for my getaway. I flew into the air but got picked off by archers. I would have fallen to the ground at their feet, but Sir Rikkard was watching through a far-viewer tube. He caught me telekinetically and dropped me right onto the operating table in the hospital tent. Now that is what I call ambulance service!"
Everyone could see that Liam was trying to underplay his own conspicuous heroism. Liam was one of those who simply believed that sometimes a guy just did what a guy had to do or he wouldn't be able to live with himself. So his friends indulged Liam and did not insist on calling him a great hero. But he was.
"Axel, your blue tattoo is different. What does it indicate?"
"That I am an orc-friend, the first and only one in living memory. During the peace conference the orcs learned that I was the catalyst for the peace which ended their war with us and brought them over to our side as allies against the trolls. You must have read how hard they have been fighting in Amazonia. They have been fired by prospect of liberating a new and larger homeland for their people. Emigrant orcs from the lands of the eastern barbarians have augmented their numbers."
"Orcs eh? And you earned it as a peacemaker, as so many of you are as well as being great fighters. Your deeds speak for themselves. I feel honored to be in your company."
"I don't doubt that you have deeds of your own to relate like the story of how you conquered Sogdiana." Drew began
"And we all saw your leadership and fighting progress at the Sign of the Bow. So since we are speaking of mighty deeds, when will you tell me more about your own? I am sure they would fill a book."
"Not just a single book, my young friend." Madden corrected, one finger raised. "Volumes!"
That brought a chuckle all around.
Chapter 5. Setting Off
At the air field early the next day the three pilots readied their autogyros while the other five loaded the transport with supplies and equipment plus tools and spare parts for the flying machines. Then they suited up settling their weapons around their persons. Not that they expected trouble on the first leg to Grayling. Far from it. It was just good practice, a final check on their readiness and equipment.
The twins and Dylan carried their long bows unstrung plus a quiver with a mix of hunting and war arrows with extras stowed in the transport. Pouches on their belts held small vials of Aodh's powerful venom. Ordinary arrows alone might not stop the charge of a slash bear, but no creature no matter how enraged could ignore the excruciating pain caused by the venom, giving an archer the chance to put enough arrows into the beast to kill him by blood loss even if an arrowhead did not hit its heart. Another vial held a silvered lacquer effective against ensorcelled creatures like trackers and slashers.
No quarter staffs for any of them. They were too long and clumsy for a cockpit and they wouldn't be preceding on foot all that much anyway. The quarterstaff was as much a hiking pole as it was a weapon. Of course Jemsen could call on his powers as an earth wizard and Karel as an air wizard regardless of the weapons they bore.
Axel hung a kukri in a scabbard on his belt, a pair of very short scabbards for his fist knives, plus a pouch with a vial of Aodh's venom and his sling and some lead bullets, thought that was now just a backup. His main distance weapons, besides his powers of teleportation, were Eike's air guns. By preference he carried the shorter carbine version which the cavalry used though he also brought along the longer infantry version which was better for sniping. After his combat experience against the trolls Axel was a dead shot.
Drew also had a kukri plus a pouch with two steel spheres the size of peaches and another with soporific darts to put foes to sleep plus a couple of pouches of double-pointed dowel nails. For this trip he hung a circular wooden holster from his belt. Borrowed from the Navy it held one of their anti-rigging discs.
Made of steel the size and shape of a discus only with a keen edge all the way around, in naval combat it was used by fetchers to cut apart the rigging of enemy vessels. Both Army and Navy had adopted it as for use against enemy flyers in the "anti-personnel role" as the military chillingly put it. Though both spheres and discus relied on their momentum for their devastating effect, the spheres were intended to smash where the discus would cut apart, whether rigging or bodies. Wielded by a powerful fetcher like Drew, a discus could kill virtually any creature including slash bears though it might take more than a single cut.
Madden Sexton hung a kukri, a morning-star, and a buckler on his belt. Instead of a bow, his distance weapon was the infantry version of the airgun which had a longer barrel than Axel's carbine did. But then he was a much bigger guy, foot taller and two and one half times the mass. And when he invoked his gift, Sexton transformed into a wolverine five times larger and fifteen times stronger than any natural wolverine which were fearsome enough creatures at only fifty pounds, able to take prey many times their size including deer and elk.
As a war wizard Liam was a living weapon in his own right, a combination of a fetcher, a weather wizard, and a water wizard with additional powers of levitation and flight, concealment and white fire though not ordinary firecasting. And he could open space portals. He too carried a kukri but more as a camp tool than as a weapon and, following Drew's lead, a discus.
Finn Ragnarson looked every inch the avatar of Thor, the thunder god of the Norse, eight feet tall and a massive six hundred pounds. He wore helmet, breastplate, buckler, and steel gauntlets for defense. For offensive power he relied on his mighty war hammer Mjolnir, the Mountain Crusher. Finn drew strength from lighting and used it as an area weapon raining bolts on enemies not just from clouds but out of a clear sky. Stronger in magic than ever, he could now throw lightning bolts directly, precision targeting them with Mjolnir.
A gift of the dwarves, Mjolnir was forged by heat and magic out of steel made from meteoric iron so it would never rust and was virtually shatterproof. The head was shaped like that of a sledge with octagonal faces only more tapered to concentrate the impact. The haft was as long as a human arm and made of both ironwood and ash to give it strength and flexibility. Wrapped in leather for greater strength, the haft had a loop at the end by which it might be swung in an arc with devastating effect.
Axel gestured at their weaponry. "To look at us, armed the way we are, you would hardly think we were on a peaceful mission of exploration and diplomacy."
Sexton shook his head. "What we look like is a tough bunch of travelers no one would care to tangle with. Not if they have any sense. Our looks alone will likely deter aggression."
With that thought they climbed into their autogyros, all except Axel. Standing next to Finn's custom autogyro he rested his hand on its hull then instantly Jumped himself, the aerocraft, and its crew to the air field serving the town of Grayling, the most northerly port on the Long River.
Jumping had advantages over passing through a portal. The magic itself rather than the mage adjusted for the difference in rotational speed of the planet's surface at different latitudes. A Jump happened in an instant and could transport virtually anything the jumper touched -- even a house. It wasn't a matter of mass but of size.
Axel made the round trip twice more till all three aerocraft and all eight adventurers were on the field at Grayling.
"And at the end of our mission Finn, just give me the order and I'll jump us all back to either Grayling or to the capital." Axel said proudly.
"Good work, Axel."
"That's got me thinking, Axel," Liam said.
"We actually have two ways to get back to Grayling or the capital since I can open a portal to either location. I can even doing it during flight. We would just guide our autogyros through the portal and zip right back. Or I could open one at ground level and we would just roll through it."
"I thought you still had trouble with opening big portals?" Drew asked.
"I've gotten much better at it. Size is no longer the problem it once was, but I still can't hold a gate open for very long. Not yet anyway."
Grayling was the first town on the Long River below a series of rapids and cataracts marking the head of navigation. It was at once a river port, an industrial town, a district capital, and the provider of services to the rural area around it.
Already sizable at that point, the river ran south along the foot of a steep escarpment. Tributaries and dramatic waterfalls ran off the escarpment to augment its flow. A good sized town occupied the triangle of land where one of the smaller rivers joined the greater one. That town was Grayling.
Leaving their machines and gear in the care of the staff at the Army airfield, the company of adventurers took rooms at an upscale inn and dined at a fancy restaurant, treating themselves to a bit of luxury before setting off on their great adventure.
At bedtime they paired off: Finn with Drew, Dylan with Jemsen and Karel, and Axel with Liam.
Finn and Drew's relationship went all the way back to the war against the centaurs in what became New Varangia. And if Finn was famous among his people as half of the team of Old Arn and Young Finn in the Breach during the Battle of the Ravine, Drew was equally celebrated as the Brave Little Fetcher who had stood with them.
Dylan's relationship with the twins was much more recent. Besides the strong physical attraction, their personalities were compatible. Of this trio of beautiful young people, one was a full-blooded elf while the other two were elf-friends with all that implied about same-gender sexual orientation and a preference for a clothing free or skin-clad life style. Expert archers and professional adventurers they also shared the magical gift of Unerring Direction.
For Axel, Liam was his first real lover. Only seventeen when they had met, the two had taken an instant shine to each other when Liam presented himself at the office of the well-regarded war wizard Sir Willet Hanford at the Institute seeking an apprenticeship in wizardry. He carried a letter of introduction from Drew who was himself a protege of Sir Willet's.
Regardless of who slept with whom on a particular night, the youths were practically family. Only Dylan and Finn did not live in the capital. However on the twins' frequent visits to Elysion, if the young elf wasn't out on patrol, he shared their rooms. On Finn's visits from Flensborg where he was stationed Finn stayed at the enlarged suite of rooms that all eight boys shared: the twins, Drew, Axel, Corwin Klarendes, Karl-Eike Thyssen, Liam and Nathan Lathrop, that is when the last two were not away on duty with the Navy.
Madden Sexton was the odd man out. The burly ranger consorted exclusively with the female half of the species. His attitude was one of detached and bemused puzzlement at all the fuss so many men made over pretty boys. Madden just didn't understand what some men saw in cute young guys, or rather he didn't feel what they felt. Pretty girls, now that was something he could understand, though thankfully he was well beyond the urgency of the teenage years. He wasn't interested in a casual encounter in Grayling.
All the others, knowing they couldn't always count on proper beds in their travels, made the most of their opportunity.
In the morning, Axel gave the machines a final check.
"There is not much that can go wrong with these machines, but the rotor bearings need to be oiled every other day and the wheel bearings greased. We do need to keep an eye out for bad weather. The rule is that you settle to the ground before the blow reaches you. Otherwise we should be safe enough. Even with no forward speed to spin the rotor, an autogyro will land itself safely. As the autogyro sinks to the ground the rotor spins from the air it passes through providing enough lift for a safe landing."
Rolling the autogyros onto the field, the pilots invoked their telekinetic gift or in Finn's case his magnetic one, and pushed their aerocraft down the field for the short take off run typical of the autogyro. These machines couldn't take off vertically or hover. The rotor of the autogyro turned freely, spun by the force of the wind created by the forward motion of the autogyro. Both rotor and stubby wings generated lift.
Pointing their aerocraft toward the mountains, the Corps of Discovery set forth toward the unknown.
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.