Elf Boy's Friends

Elf-Boy's Friends 52

The Southern Ocean

by George Gauthier

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

Chapter 1. Who

Things were back to normal seven months after the return of the Second Corps of Discovery to the capital: Drew Altair and Corwin Klarendes were back at their desks as reporters for the Capital Intelligencer. Drew had also resumed his editorship of the monthly journal "Magic," an official publication of the Institute of Wizardry and Magic.

Both young journalists were basking in the success of their latest book, a joint account of their expedition to the Western Dividing Range. Not only was it another best-seller, it had won them yet another Writers' Prize, much to the chagrin of more than a few their fellow journalists who thought it was high time someone else got picked as chronicler for one of the high profile missions that had won the pair fame and fortune.

There was little chance of anything like that happening. As journalists Corwin and Drew were at the top of their game. Even more important were the character traits which made them ideal for the important missions that were the subject of their books and their journalism. The boys were courageous, forthright, outgoing, loyal, and public spirited. Both had been to the wars not only as war correspondents but also as soldiers and had given a good account of themselves fighting eastern barbarians, centaurs, orcs, and trolls. They had also participated in rescue missions after natural disasters where Drew's powerful telekinesis and Corwin's magical healing abilities had saved many lives.

Then too the boys were very well-connected to the top echelons of the government of the Commonwealth from the commanding general of the army to the Chief Hand of the Commonwealth, to the leaders of many foreign peoples whom the Commonwealth had befriended.

Nor did it hurt that many of the other members of the various Corps of Discovery were their own friends, roommates, and lovers, including Sir Finn Ragnarson, the famous twins Jemsen and Karel, the war wizard Sir Liam, and the war mage and wizard's aide Sir Axel Wilde.

Two roommates had not yet been on exploratory expeditions though that was about to change in the case of the naval officer Sir Nathan "Sparky" Lathrop. The naval architect and inventor Karl-Eike Thyssen was deemed too valuable to risk on hazardous adventures, which was just fine by him.

With business set aside for a breather, all of the roommates except Finn Ragnarson took a week off, spending much of their time in or around the swimming pool on the grounds of the up-scale residential hotel in the capital where Drew and Corwin and the other seven in their circle of friends shared rooms in a large conjoined suite on the third floor.

The pool had started out as simply a wide spot in the creek which ran through the property. It was now an artificial structure fifty yards long and half that in width and ten feet deep in the middle. Stonework stabilized the banks while the bottom was carpeted with large pebbles worn smooth and round by erosion.

At one point Eike clambered out of the swimming pool then lay under a shade tree to rest. Swimming laps was good exercise, but it did tire the body. With a sigh he closed his eyes and dozed while those fellow residents who were not in his circle of friends gazed at him with longing in their hearts and loins. Few males who fancied pretty boys would have turned down an assignation with the exquisite youth, a veritable vision of youthful male concupiscence laid out all bronzed and bare for their delectation.

Slightly built, slender, and smooth muscled Eike had the tawny skin of someone who habitually spent a good deal of time outdoors in the nude or next thing to it -- all that running around the shipyards in just a skimpy loin cloth. And like the others, thanks to druidical healing magic he looked no more than sixteen and would stay that way for centuries.

Far prettier than any boy rightly ought to be Eike was blessed with large green eyes set wide apart under finely arched brows, their lashes too long to have ever have been meant for a male. High cheekbones, a straight nose, plus subtly pointed ears and chin gave him an elfin appearance although his heritage was fully human.

As Eike dozed the twins Jemsen and Karel got back from their run in a nearby park. Those daily runs not only built endurance and strength but were also a chance to show off the splendid physiques which nature had graced them with. Boyishly handsome, tanned and toned, and with hair the color of cornsilk they were as evenly tanned as Eike, their skin just as smooth and glabrous, being totally free of body hair, even at the fork of the legs.

Ever cheerful, fond of jokes and pranks, a pair of incessant chatterboxes with an insatiable curiosity, the twins were always plying those around them with questions -- in short they were a delightful combination of brains, good looks, and sex appeal.

After a quick shower the twins stepped into the casual section of the pool and let the cool water support their tired bodies in the weightless aqueous environment.

The rest of their circle of friends soon joined them, first Drew Altair and then Corwin Klarendes who spent many more nights at the hotel than he did at the Klarendes townhouse.

The two young journalists slipped out of the white silk tunics they favored for professional wear and took a quick shower. Riding his bicycle Corwin had worked up a sweat on the tropical heat of the capital. As a fetcher, Drew Altair had propelled his vehicle telekinetically staying cool and dry from the breeze created by his forward motion. Still the weather was hot so he showered too before a swim.

Drew was an impossibly cute twink with spiky auburn hair and narrow sideburns reaching below the ear lobe plus straight eyebrows with almost no curve to them. They framed a fine-boned face with a high forehead, chiseled jawline, and a perky nose slightly turned up at the end. Slightly built -- he stood only five foot zero and weighed but a hundred pounds -- his tiny frame was easily twice as strong as it looked thanks to the same druidical healing magic which had lengthened his life and prolonged his youth.

Corwin Klarendes stood four inches taller than Drew. Short, slight of build, and clean limbed and with close cropped blond hair, he was blessed with delicate features which suggested a considerable admixture of elfin blood in his ancestry like all those in the Klarendes clan including his uncle Count Taitos Klarendes, Count of the Eastern March.

Corwin was still excited about his and Drew's latest Writers' prize for their account of the doings of the Second Corps of Discovery. The authors were at loose ends for their next project and were kicking ideas around when a familiar voice interjected:

"Talking shop at home?"

"Nathan, you're back!" Eike exclaimed. "It's been a long three months."

"We were lucky to wind up the inspection faster than the admiral thought we would," the young naval officer replied.

Lieutenant Sir Nathan "Sparky" Lathrop was still in his blue naval silks. So too was the naval war wizard Sir Liam who had taken the street car with him from Admiralty House.

A little shorter than his naval colleague, Nathan had the willowy build of an elf though he was fully human. Nathan was boyishly cute, a freckle-faced carrot-topped youngster who looked much too young to be an officer in the Navy of the Commonwealth. He had been recalled from the naval base Southport to help plan future exploratory missions for the Commonwealth's new flotilla of ocean-going ships.

Liam was a well-set up lad with a fine healthy body. A raven-haired beauty blessed with chiseled features he stood just under medium height and was on the slender side but with a strong upper storey.

With the arrival of the naval contingent, of the nine roommates only Axel Wilde and Finn Ragnarson were not around the swimming pool on the grounds of their residential hotel. But then Sir Finn Ragnarson was one of the Dread Hands of the Commonwealth, the government's chief troubleshooters. These days he worked closely with Baron Jarmond, the Chief Hand. The end of the war against the trolls might have lightened the workload of the armed forces, but not that of law enforcement agencies like the Hands, the city watches, and the rural constabularies.

Though Sir Axel Wilde was now a full fledged war mage able to teleport himself and things he touched, he still worked as aide to his mentor the war wizard Sir Willet Hanford at the Institute of Wizardry and Magic, which lay not far from the headquarters of the Hands or, for that matter, terribly far from their hotel. The missing pair were likely to show up together and certainly by dinner time.

The cost of meals at the restaurant on the ground floor were included in the boys' leases, so that is where they usually ate if they were not dining out at one of their favorite restaurants in Twinkle Town or as a guest at the Klarendes townhouse, when the family was in town. Only the younger son Eborn lived there full-time managing the family's extensive investments in everything from street cars to refrigeration to companies that built bicycles and autogyros.

Sure enough, a little before supper time the missing duo turned up. Axel was another redhead though his hair was the color of copper. Except for Corwin and Eike, Axel was the youngest of them and more than a hand shorter than the twins.

Short, slightly built fair and extremely boyish looking, boyishly cute, Axel's face was dominated by large green eyes set over heart-melting dimples. Intelligent and somewhat reserved, he was perhaps the least confrontational and assertive of the group and the most conciliatory.

Finn was a Frost Giant who stood eight feet tall and weighed six hundred pounds of bone and muscle. Thanks to his innate magic and a constitution strengthened by the New Forest, Finn had thrice his natural strength. He was by no means the largest of the Frost Giants but was far and away the strongest, which was only fitting for the avatar of Thor, thunder god of the ancient Norse, the remote ancestors of the frost giants.

Despite all that Finn was boyishly handsome with a face which featured a straight nose and firm chin, graced by grey eyes, all framed by a tousled thatch of dark hair.

That made it four blondes, two raven-haired beauties, and three red-heads: auburn-haired Drew Altair, copper-topped Axel Wilde, and the flame-haired naval lieutenant, a carrot-top.

The blondes were the twins Jemsen and Karel, Corwin Klarendes, and the young inventor Thyssen. Of the two with dark hair, Liam wore his in a short military cut while Finn had let his grow out a bit.

The latecomers stripped off and swam for a while with the other joining them. The water was invitingly cool thanks to the inflow from a spring upstream. Straight-forward swimming soon gave way to the grab ass games nude youths were all too prone to engage in while ostensibly swimming, which lead to foreplay, which lead to more intimate forms of interaction.

Their hard toned bodies intertwined in all the ways randy youths were capable of when consummating their physical passions. First the twins paired off with Axel one at a time. After a pause they double-teamed him, plugging him at both ends. Axel was in heaven, impaled on the cocks of two of the boys he loved most in the world. Their enhanced vitality conferred on them a degree of sexual potency beyond the norm. It was a long time before they were spent and lapsed into a pleasant post-coital lassitude.

But with them lovemaking was not just recreational, it also a physical reaffirmation of the romantic love they all felt for each other. And it was not only those three. Ever since Liam and Drew had brought him into their circle of friends, Axel had come out of his shell. The twins had taken a shine to the engaging wizard's aide. Smart, cute, and a truly gentle person, there was a lot to like about him, including his physical beauty.

All of them could look forward to centuries of youth and heath and vigor, whether from druidical life magic or the admixture of elven blood in their heritage. Thanks to druidic magic Axel would always be an extremely boyish-looking eighteen year old, whatever the count of years marked by the calendar. Similarly the twins were nineteen and would stay so for the next five centuries. Same for Drew who looked no more than seventeen going on eighteen. As a Klarendes, Corwin's heritage was nearly half elf to begin with. That and his magical gift of healing would keep him young for many centuries.

The passing years would add to their valuable life experience, but no evidence of the passage of time would show in their faces or bodies. Magically prolonged youth and longevity was a gift which kept on giving.

Chapter 2. Why

"Sir Willet, Sir Rikkard, if you will join the rest of us in the conference room." Axel Wilde asked the two senior war wizards.

"Right, we'd better not keep your harem waiting, Will."

Sir Rikkard liked to tease his good friend Sir Willet Hanford about the comely male proteges he had collected around him, though of course they were chosen for their skills and talents and character not for their looks or sex appeal. The joshing was all in good fun. Rikkard knew very well that Sir Willet Hanford was a thorough-going ladies' man, one who consorted exclusively with the female half of the species.

The two senior war wizards nodded, rose, and followed the pretty red-haired youth from Sir Willet's office to the conference room. Pads and pencils were laid out in front of each conferree along with a copy of the agenda and supporting documents. In the center were glasses and a carafe of chilled water. The blackboard on the wall had been washed clean, chalks and erasers lined up on the ledge at the bottom.

Sir Rikkard's kidding aside, the young males seated around the table would have made a fabulous harem for any potentate who fancied pretty boys. Likewise an operator of a boy brothel would be ecstatic to have them in his stable of rent boys.

The conferees included the senior wizards' much younger colleague the raven-haired Sir Liam who looked very military dressed in navy blues cut to flatter his slender physique with its strong upper storey.

Going around the table clockwise, the next pair was nearly always described as "the famous twins Jemsen and Karel". The next two were a pair of journalists: one an impossibly cute twink with spiky auburn hair, the second a cute blond youth -- Drew Altair and Corwin Klarendes.

Seated next to Corwin was his first cousin Artor Klarendes, first born son of count Taitos Klarendes, Count of the Eastern March. Artor was a good looking lad seemingly still in his early twenties thanks to a generous admixture of elven blood in his family. He stood above medium height and was blessed with the deeply tanned athletic build of a swimmer: narrow hips, strong shoulders, and large hands. Beside Artor sat the naval architect, inventor, and technical wizard Karl Eike Thyssen.

Then came Rikkard's long-serving aide Evan, and elf. Like Drew Altair, Evan was a powerful fetcher, but stood a full foot taller at six feet even. He had the typical willowy physique and delicate features of his race. Although Evan seemed as young as the others he was more than three times their chronological age with commensurate life experience, hence his participation.

Anyone who did not know them would have taken them for teenagers, thanks to magically enhanced constitutions whether from their ancestral heritage or druidical healing magic. Giants, elves, and those with a strong admixture of elven blond like the Klarendes clan had life spans measure in centuries rather than decades. They could all forward to half a millennium or more of life and perpetual youth, never really aging till near the end.

The shortest participant was the well-regarded war wizard Sir Krekor. The dwarf was known for his imperturbability on a battlefield when all hell was breaking loose around him. He was also one of Sir Willet's collaborators on research into their specialty of Concealment. Like all dwarves Krekor stood four feet tall but was big boned and powerfully built, as befits a physique originally designed for high gravity planets during the days of the Galactic Empire of yore.

The most powerful physique belonged to the Frost Giant Sir Finn Ragnarson who stood eight feet tall and weighed six hundred pounds. At his belt hung his great war hammer Mjolnir. He was at the meeting not only as one of Axel's circle of friends but also in his capacity as a Dread Hand of the Commonwealth.

The two senior war wizards took their seats, and Sir Willet began by saying:

"Thank you all for coming. I should mention that Evan is attending as a full participant rather than just as Sir Rikkard's aide. He brings another perspective to the discussion -- that of decades as a wizard's aide. It is true that Axel serves as my own aide, but he is much younger and is also a war mage in his own right by virtue of his gift of teleportation."

"I only wish Derry, that is Derrionydd, Corwin and Axel's new boyfriend were here to provide the perspective of a shapeshifting unicorn, but Derrionydd is currently roaming the New Forest with the colony of Snow Elves. Our friend the elf-lord Dahlderon could not make it to this meeting, but I can report that the druid agreed that his order would participate in our upcoming naval expedition in the Southern Ocean. It will certain enhance our chance for success to have one of the most powerful magic wielders on the planet along."

"Anyway thanks to Axel's organizational and administrative talents my office is once running smoothly, as you can judge for yourselves from the excellent arrangements for today's conference. I was at my wits' end during his many weeks away from the capital with the second Corps of Discovery."

"During our discussion Axel will be taking written and mental notes of what we say then write it all up afterwards, relying on his gift of eidetic memory. You will get copies and have the chance to add to or amend your remarks."

Sir Rikkard had noticed that the agenda and supporting documents were bound together by a wire loop of sorts and interrupted his colleague to ask:

"Er... Axel, what is this clever thingamajig which is holding these sheets of paper together?

Axel smiled.

"It's something brand new, a recent invention by the very same fellow who invented the machinery to mass produce graphite pencils. Kross is his name. You might recall that my family and I gave him crucial early backing at a time when no one else would. Our investment paid off big time for all of us."

"Now our company is venturing into a new segment of the market for stationary and office supplies. Kross has invented what he calls the paper clip. The easy part was the design which can be made with hand tools though only one at a time. The clever part was to devise a machine that could do the job at high speed and turn out thousands of these things in a day. The machine cuts lengths of steel wire and bends them into a precise shape -- a shape which uses the torsion and elasticity of the wire and friction between wire and paper to hold loose sheets of paper together and in their proper order."

"What will they think up next!"

"I do realize that that was a rhetorical question, Sir Rikkard, but I am actually going to answer it since I am in a position to tell you exactly what will come next. It is a device called a stapler which I have been trying out at my desk for a couple of weeks now. Here is what it looks like."

"Now this is a hand operated tool and might not look like much, but the stapler provides a way to fasten papers together more permanently and more securely than with paper clips. It uses very short lengths of a much thinner steel wire shaped like the big staples which carpenters use to tack or fasten things together. Just as a carpenter uses a hammer to drive staples straight into wood this swing arm presses the points of these small staples through the sheets against an anvil in the base which bends and clinches the legs together to secure the sheets, like so.... It's quite ingenious really and will be on the market very soon."

The conferees shook their heads in admiration of Axel's business savvy. Having already made one fortune with his street lighting business and another with graphite pencils, here he was about to launch two sure-to-be-successful products onto the market. More power to him.

Sir Willet picked up where he had left off.

"Now to outline why we are all here I shall call upon the estimable Finn Ragnarson to explain how and why he and his friends came up with the idea of developing non-lethal weapons and tactics. Finn, you're on."

"Thank you Sir Willet. First let's go over some background."

"We are living in a time of peace and prosperity. The great wars of recent decades against the eastern barbarians, the centaurs, and the trolls are safely in the past. We can look forward to a long era with the Commonwealth of the Long River as the unchallenged hegemon of the continent of Valentia, which is now at its greatest territorial extent ever. We can be gratified that none of our recent annexations were the result of any aggressive or expansionary design but were entirely voluntary or defensive in nature."

"In the first instance we conquered the land of the centaurs, a carnivorous species of hunters who viewed all other sentients on the planets as so many meat animals to be hunted down and eaten. We would have left them in peace in their isolated land save that they allied themselves with the eastern barbarians in an attempted conquest of the Eastern Plains. They started a war of conquest, but what they got was a war of annihilation."

"In the second instance, our expansion into the Far West was intended to forestall the development of a military peer and potential challenger on our continent. We headed off a costly and bloody military confrontation by forming a secret but informal alliance with the revolutionaries of Dzungaria to undermine and overturn the unjust social, political, and economic order of our own allies and force them to adopt the reforms which produced good governance, peace, and prosperity throughout that vast region. In time all of the countries of the Far West petitioned for annexation to the Commonwealth."

"More recently we fought the greatest war in our history to reclaim both the Barren Lands and then Amazonia from the fanatical and genocidal trolls. In Amazonia our own settlers have made great strides there in rehabilitating that vast territory. So have our allies the orcs in their new homeland there."

"I should also point to our success in linking the Northlands into our Greater North Valentia Co-Prosperity Sphere which is not a formal alliance but a loose group of independent but friendly states linked by communications, trade, investment, travel and tourism, and cultural exchange. These states have no designs on each other's territory or independence but only wish to live in peace with each other and with us which ensures that we have no problem neighbors to the North."

"All well and true, Sir Finn, but you are telling us what we already know. Am I the only one around this table wondering where this is going?" asked Rikkard's aide Evan.

"That is a fair question, Evan. Here is the answer. Until recently the Commonwealth has always looked inward toward the heart of the continent. We have spread our aegis to the West, the North, and the Southeast. At the end of the war in Amazonia we secured a foothold on the South coast of the continent and established a naval base on the southern ocean."

"Now we are poised to push outward, not to conquer and annex but to explore and to open up trade routes to the mutual advantage of lands of which we are only dimly aware or even entirely unknown. Who knows what dangers we might encounter or what kind of trouble might be brewing out there? Remember that until the trolls invaded Valentia we knew nothing about their long war of conquest and extermination in the oceanic archipelago of their origin."

"The peoples we encounter upon might not be friendly to strangers arriving from across the sea. They might fear us as potential pirates or slavers, or invaders come to push them out of their ancestral lands. So our initial encounters might not always be peaceful. Yet even if forced to defend ourselves we should minimize bloodshed and destruction in the hope of eventual reconciliation, once we clear up such misunderstandings and prove our good intentions and bona fides."

Evan nodded. "I see. If that happens we very well might want to have non-lethal weapons and tactics in our bag of tricks so we could defend ourselves with minimal damage to inadvertent foes who we hope could eventually become our friends, allies, or trading partners."

"That's it exactly"

Chapter 3. How

"Now the original impulse toward non-lethal weapons and tactics came from our policy during the last Corps of Discovery. We need to expand of that initiative, devise similar tactics and then train all our wizards and mages in their use. Now I know you will want time to reflect, but since we are all here I would to you to share your first thoughts. I shall start off by relating the policy adopted by the second Corps of Discovery."

"Despite heading into the unknown we did not carry our airguns at the ready. The locals would never have seen airguns, but they would recognize them as weapons and would take our carrying them at the ready as a threat. Instead We kept our air guns slung over our shoulders with bayonets fixed but still in their scabbards."

"Our policy was that if trouble loomed we would try to talk our way out or withdraw. If trouble did break out, we would first try non-lethal force -- everything from fists to clubbing with the butts of the air guns or poking with blunted bayonets to martial arts. Our fetchers might yank weapons out of the hands of troublesome folks or use soporific darts. We avoided battle with the hidden orcs despite provocation because Corwin Klarendes used his ball lightning as a shield not as a sword. He intercepted a hostile levin bolt but did not retaliate, just stalemated the threat."

"Our healers were prepared to use healing magic to inflict headaches and ear aches, terrible itching, vertigo, incontinence, etc rather than blindness, heart attacks and so forth. Similarly earth magic would do no more than create a quagmire under the enemy's feet to hold them fast while air wizardry would harden air into a shield rather than a monomolecular blade. Then were the various kinds of missile shields via telekinesis, magnetic deflection, or disintegration of the shafts of arrows. We discussed tactics over among yourselves and devised signals or code words to help coordinate our actions."

"Now let's go around the table, starting with Sir Liam most of whose service has been with our Navy."

Liam nodded then said: "What comes to mind immediately is our use of steel disks in ship to ship combat."

The disks were the size and shape of a discus but with keen edges. Their original purpose was deliberately non-lethal: to cut apart lines, sheets, shrouds, hawsers, and cables thereby rendering enemy ships inoperable, just immobilized hulks which could be dealt with later. In time the flyers in the Army adopted them to serve in the anti-personnel role against both enemy fliers and ground troops. Many a fetcher like Drew himself carried a disk into combat to supplement his pair of steel spheres. The disks were blades for cutting while the spheres were for smashing enemy personnel, mounts, or equipment.

Liam continued.

"In naval combat Nathan Lathrop used electrum sparks as a force multiplier to help his sailors in boarding operations or in repelling boarders. The burn and the jolt from a spark cannot be ignored and can distract a foe at the worst possible moment for him in a clash of arms. Sparks alone could dissuade or discourage hostiles and send them running to get away from their intolerable touch."

"With the trolls we dropped boulders to sink their long ships. A single hole through the hull of open-decked vessel like a long ship could fill it with water and send it to the bottom taking all hands with it, their own armor dragging them into the depths. In the future we will likely face opponents with larger more conventional vessels, fully decked ships with water-tight compartments. To spare lives we might throw rocks just at the bow of a ship to open it to the sea but only as far the first bulkhead. That would reduce its speed and maneuverability without sinking it or killing anyone."

"Those are exactly the kinds of ideas we are looking for Liam. Uh Artor, you look like you want to say something."

"Yes, as a firecaster I control not just fire but also heat. Here is a tactic I have tried a few times though only for practice, never for real. It's a way to stop or seriously hamper the movement of a calvary column on paved roads and streets. As we all know it takes just a little bit of rain to make pavement slick and even dangerous, forcing riders to rein in. And that is with water in its liquid form. My idea is to freeze the slick and turn it into glare ice. Try riding atop that! Or apply the same trick to the deck of an opposing ship, slick either from rain or spray. Now salt spray on the ocean takes a little more effort to freeze, but the effect is the same. The crew can hardly get about on deck."

"And if you team up with a water or weather wizard, you can do it any time you care to, not just during or just after a rain. Or a war wizard like Sir Willet who is both a firecaster and a weather wizard could do the job all by himself."

"I will definitely add your innovative technique to my own bag of tricks." Sir Willet acknowledged adding:

"Another trick with heat rather than fire is to lower the temperature in an enclosed space. Your father Count Klarendes and I used that technique in the secret tunnel through the mountains, to block the passage of a vanguard of several hundred barbarian warriors. With their body temperatures lowered by twenty or thirty degrees, the enemy first lost coordination and then consciousness and finally their lives. No reason though that in future confrontations we cannot drop the temperature just low enough and long enough to render the enemy unconscious or maybe woozy and uncoordinated. That will let us send our own troops among them to disarm them before they can throw off the effects. Once warmed up again they will be good as new but with their fangs and claws pulled, as it were."

Everyone agreed that these ideas were all well and good. So far they had heard what air wizards, fetchers and firecasters might do. What of other gifts? Axel spoke next.

"Unicorns have a sonic weapon a so-called killer neigh which is an effective non-lethal weapon. Really an intolerable screech, it does not kill but it startles, pains, and distracts the unicorn's foes, and either drives them off or makes them vulnerable to the equine's natural weapons: horn, hoofs, and teeth. Too bad our new friend Derry isn't here to demonstrate, but he is sojourning in the New Forest with the colony of Snow Elves we installed there not long ago."

"Speaking of sonic weapons," Jemsen added. "don't forget Aodh's weapon which is even more effective since it is highly directional, strong in a conical zone in front but negligible to the sides or behind."

Jemsen described Aodh's sonic weapon as an intolerable screech or better a snarl much like the sound of fingernails scraping on a slate only far worse. The sound could rupture eardrums and induce pain, temporary deafness, and dizziness. As the enemy staggered about with hands over their ears friendly forces could close with them to disarm and bind them.

"We could thus spare the lives of soldiers who were only doing their duty, and who as likely as not were as decent a lot of fellows as our own citizens."

The twins pointed out that even the deadly power of sun mirrors could be used to spare lives rather than take them.

Sun mirrors were sheets of dense air with surfaces as shiny as mirages. They could be formed in the sky or even at ground level and in any shape. Guided by his gift of unerring direction, Karel could angle one or two flat mirrors to bounce the sun's rays into a parabolic mirror focussed on a target, creating a powerful heat beam.

This was a truly devastating weapon, whether as an incendiary or in the "anti-personnel role" as army terminology chillingly put it. Actually sun mirrors most often were used indirectly for their incendiary effect to set wildfires in grasslands and forests to block enemy troop movements or to destroy supply dumps or wooden bridges. Used against troop concentrations sun mirrors were devastatingly effective as Karel had shown in Amazonia against troll horse archers.

"But there are ways to use sun mirrors such as in aid of a Concealment as I did during our peace mission to the orcs of the Eastern Mountains. The most remarkable non-lethal use was years ago when a Commonwealth air wizard won the thanks of both sides for refusing to direct a heat ray at enemy troops as his commander had ordered him to. The commander wanted to spare the lives of his own men who would otherwise have had to make a frontal assault on an entrenched position."

"Instead the wizard drove the enemy out of their field fortifications by boiling the water in a nearby pond then called a jet of wind to push the cloud of superheated steam toward the enemy entrenchments, forcing the troops stationed there to withdraw lest they be scalded."

"Caught out in the open, the troops were vulnerable to Commonwealth cavalry, but the commander held his men back realizing that the retreat of the enemy forces had opened the supply route they had been blocking. With his own men now in control of the entrenchments, a fight no longer had any purpose. Instead he offered the enemy generous terms to prevent a useless effusion of blood on both sides. The opposing troops were granted full military honors and allowed to march to their own borders, under arms, banners flying, heads held high, on their parole not to participate in hostilities for the remainder of the war."

"The wizard's merciful tactic won a victory as decisive as a battle of annihilation but without bloodshed. Moreover the Commonwealth's forbearance in sparing the lives of the enemy troops and letting them keep their dignity lead to peace feelers which quickly ended a war that would never have started in the first place but for misunderstandings and a failure of diplomacy, not to mention misdirected ambitions on the part of the enemy elites."

Then the dwarf Sir Krekor spoke up.

"Don't overlook the possibilities of using maneuver as a non-lethal tactic. In the right circumstances, maneuver can make actual fighting unnecessary by blocking the enemy or by threatening his lines of communication, supply, and reinforcement. With our space portals we can move whole bodies of troops suddenly and in total secrecy, perhaps aided by a concealment then have them form up in position to make enemy dispositions untenable. A foe might then be more inclined to parley and try talking his way out of trouble."

Finn nodded:

"Thank you Sir Krekor. Using maneuver and concealment to prevent a battle from breaking out in the first place is the surest way to prevent casualties, both fatalities and injuries. Now Eike, you look like you have something to add."

"My own magical gifts do not lend themselves to combat, but as an inventor I have equipped our armed forces with new weapons including airguns, magnetic cannon, autogyros, and torpedoes. One area I would like to explore is the use of irritants and incapacitating agents to take the fight out of an enemy without inflicting real harm."

"I am thinking of things like itching powder which could be delivered by slingers with fire globes, dropped by flyers or autogyros in our Army Air Corps, or perhaps even shot out of magnetic cannon. Itching powders can have either an alchemical effect or just a mechanical one. The seed pods of velvet beans are covered with loose orange hairs. In contact with skin, a chemical in the hairs causes a severe itch. Ground-up rose hips rely on a purely mechanical effect. The fine hairs inside rose hips make an excellent itching powder."

"A pepper spray can be prepared from hot chilis. Its inflammatory effect causes the eyes to water and close, depriving your foe of vision making it easy to bind and restrain him or simply give your own forces time to withdraw. Pepper spray is already in wide use for policing, crowd control, and personal self-defense, and can also defend against overly aggressive dogs, as any delivery agent could testify."

At that point the participants ran out of ideas. They adjourned to let Axel write up his account of the conference and distribute copies. They group agreed to reconvene in a week, giving them time to read and to reflect. After which Drew would publish their ideas in his newsletter "Magic" for his readership to think on and write in with suggestions.

In this way the Commonwealth was preparing itself to face outward and explore the wider world, armed with tactics and weapons that would spare lives in the event of misunderstandings with the peoples their explorers would encounter.

Chapter 4. Where

The naval base at Southport was the jumping off place for the Commonwealth's first naval expedition to explore the Southern Ocean which circled the globe in the temperate latitudes south of the three tropical continents. Theretofore ocean voyages had been limited to inshore waters as the crews trained on the new style ships which were based on the designs of the frost giants of Nordstrom all the way across the continent on the Northern Ocean.

The flotilla carrying this latest Corps of Discovery consisted of five ships, three frigates, a sloop, and an aerocraft carrier with a reduced complement of pilots, autogyros, flying wings, and incendiary bombs. The space thus freed up was devoted to extra supplies. Admiral Van Zant, Chief of the Bureau of Ships, had brushed aside objections to turning one of the Navy's capital ships halfway into a cargo vessel. The fact was that the Navy was not on a war footing and the flotilla would not be sailing into battle. Its smaller complement of aerocraft were adequate for reconnaissance, scouting, and exploration, and support of naval landing forces.

The heavy frigates as they were called were stout vessels three hundred feet from bowsprit to spanker, built to survive the tempestuous outer oceans, using techniques learned from the Frost Giants who sailed the Northern Ocean. Their ribs were not set perpendicular to the keel but as pairs of ribs criss-crossing at the keel, their ends braced against the adjoining pairs fore and aft. All ships's bottoms were sheathed in copper to prevent fouling. Otherwise shipworms would bore into the hull and weaken it, and weeds would foul the bottom, appreciably slowing the vessel.

Another feature was that wood from the live oak was used for key components. So called because it was an evergreen species of oak, its lumber was used for curved structural members of the hull such as knee braces which supported the upper or gun deck. The lumber was cut so that the line of the grain was perpendicular to the lines of stress, creating a structure of exceptional strength.

Live oak was never used for planking. The curved and convoluted shapes of the trunks of live oaks did not lend themselves to being sawed into planking. Red oak or white oak were used fro planking instead. Those trees grew straight and tall and yielded trunks straight enough and long enough for sawing into planks.

Named The Sovereign of the Seas, the flush-decked aerocraft carrier was five hundred feet long and junk-rigged, its battened sails raised on short solid unstayed masts, meaning they stood without shrouds or stays, a design which made it much easier to launch and retrieve aerocraft. It helped that the take-off run of an autogyro or flying wing was so very short and its landing run was hardly more than the aerocraft's own length.

The junk rig was simple and required few hands to sail the ship. Indeed her sails could be reefed from the deck by pulling on hawsers. A junk rigged ship could not sail into the wind very well and would hardly move in a light wind, but that was not a problem, not with weather wizards and air wizards aboard. The weather wizards could call a wind to fill her sails, light wind or no while the air wizards could create air currents to supplement a light wind and to make her more nimble and maneuverable.

All vessels were fully modern warships; there were no old fashioned ballistas or catapults on these ships. Instead they were armed with magnetic cannon with barrels sixteen feet long made of non-magnetic bronze, a metal which fortuitously did not corrode in the salt water of the southern ocean.

The gunners were masters of magnetism who propelled steel jacketed incendiary shells and canister shot down the long barrel. Shells were long-range anti-ship weapons. Canister was a short-range anti-personnel weapon designed to sweep an enemy's deck when it approached for boarding.

The cannon were mounted in pairs; their twin barrels extended over a circular ring of armor made of steel plate backed by oak. (The flimsy overhead cover was merely protection from the elements.)

The twin mounts were installed atop four rotating barbettes one fore and aft and one on each beam. The placement of the barbettes gave the guns wide fields of fire and allowed six guns to bear in every direction: to starboard and port and fore and aft.

Unlike the frigates with their quarterdecks and forecastles, the sloop was flush-decked from bow to stern. It mounted just two single cannon, fore and aft. The aerocraft carrier relied on its air wing and its escorts for defense. To repel boarders it had ranks of swivel guns in sponsons along the sides, and the sailors could be issued air guns from the armory.

The captain of the frigate Arctic Tern was none other than Lieutenant Sir Nathan Lathrop who was gratified that, while still only ranked as a lieutenant, as the commanding officer of a warship, his crew addressed him as "Captain."

Nathan stood easy on the quarterdeck, his weight distributed evenly on booted feet with non-slip soles, knees slightly bent to take the roll and pitch of the ship as it sailed along in a stiff breeze. Dressed in blue naval silks with a billed cap atop his head, Nathan was the calm center of a whirl of activity as the crew brought the vessel onto a new tack.

Like all Commonwealth frigates the Arctic Tern was schooner-rigged with fore-and-aft sails on two masts. That meant the hands could set the sails from the deck rather than having to scramble up the rigging as with a square-rigged vessel. More sturdily built than vessels plying the Great Inland Freshwater Sea, her relatively narrow hull and schooner rig made the Arctic Tern fast and maneuverable and very good at sailing close to the wind.

Also aboard was the Arctic Tern's war wizard and Nathan's boyfriend Sir Liam who shared Nathan's cabin and berth plus others from their old ship the Petrel including Sailing Master Crawley, Surgeon cum Healer Durban, and Mr. Wyckham the purser. With few remaining naval threats on the Great Inland Freshwater Sea, half of the vessels in the High Seas Fleet had been withdrawn from sea service and been laid up in ordinary in the reserve fleet. Most of their crews had been offered berths in the growing salt-water navy.

A combination of warship and scientific explorer, the Arctic Tern came equipped with extra accommodations for passengers such as the Corps of Discovery, which for the first time included the trio of natural philosophers who were old friends of the Klarendes clan, plus Count Klarendes' spouse, the shapeshifter Aodh.

Professor Scolari was a botanist cum mycologist, that is an expert on the fungi; next was the geologist Johan Klutz, and finally a zoologist and herpetologist Evander Blok. Not that anyone expected trouble on this voyage but Klutz and Blok had served as war mages with the allied forces in Amazonia. Klutz was a strong fetcher while Blok could throw deadly levin bolts.

They had set aside a planned expedition to the Western Dividing Range to join this third Corps of Discovery, an expedition which was well beyond the resources of their own Institute of Life and Earth Sciences. The mountains were not going anywhere; neither were the terror birds which the twins had urged Blok to study.

Three of Nathan's and Liam's roommates were also aboard the Arctic Tern: the twins Jemsen and Karel and the journalist Drew Altair. Their reserve commissions in the Armed Forces had been activated for the occasion, hence their green army silks and new style sandals which featured a unique strap system with six anchoring points for independent heel and arch straps for a perfectly secure fit. Their footgear too had non-slip soles.

Now all three held the rank of captain in the Army, but there could be only one captain aboard a naval vessel. So whenever these three worthies were addressed by rank, they got an informal and very temporary promotion, getting bumped up to Major.

(The commanding officer of the company of naval infantry traveling on the junk-rigged carrier was a lieutenant commander, the naval equivalent of an army major, though in his case, the rank was permanent.)

Representing the Ancient Order of the Druids of Haven was the elf-boy Dahlderon. The druids hoped by this voyage to extend the reach of their order which, even after centuries, operated on only two of the three equatorial continents and nowhere on the wider oceans. It was not out of the question that Dahl might return with a recruit or two to their order.

Dahl at least had his sea legs under him having years earlier escorted a small herd of brontotheres from the hidden land of the shape-shifters down the eastern coast of the continent of Valentia and along the southern coast to a landing point which gave access via a portage to the Great Inland Freshwater Sea and the Long River. Ironically the trolls had later used the very same landing for their invasion. Dahl had also voyaged to the oceanic archipelago of the trolls to lay the druidical curse on that race, really a plague which killed no one but reduced the fecundity of troll males to below replacement levels.

Only about half of the Corps of Discovery had ever ventured on the open ocean. The others: the natural philosophers, the twins, Drew Altair, and Aodh were not prepared for tides, mountainous swells, cyclonic storms, and boundless watery vistas, not to mention seasickness.

Dahl's shape-shifter friend and sometime lover Sir Aodh of LLangollen did have his sea legs under him if only thanks to an enhanced sense of balance due to his feline nature.

Aodh had volunteered for another adventure with his friends. Although something of a stay-at-home since taking up residence in Elysion with his spouse Count Taitos Klarendes, like all shape-shifters Aodh felt a periodic need to go on walkabout, a need not entirely satisfied by his job as a forest ranger. Over the years the young shape-shifter had fought side by side with his spouse at the secret tunnel through the Eastern Mountains in what came to be called the Lightning War and later in Amazonia against the trolls. On a smaller scale he had help track down poachers who hunted and killed brontotheres merely for their horns, which supposedly could restore flagging male libidos.

However good sea legs or no, seasickness arises from the mismatched sensations of motion from the eyes and the vestibular system of the inner ear. Motion sickness can be caused by motion that is felt but not seen, by motion that is seen but not felt, or when both systems detect motion in discordant ways.

Aodh had expected the acute sea sickness which came upon him right away, just as the ship reached the open sea. Too late he remembered his old mentor Balandur's warning that adventures were dangerous and uncomfortable, and they didn't always serve meals on time.

It was only after four days of true misery with all the deplorable symptoms of dizziness, fatigue, and a form of nausea which vomiting did nothing to relieve that Aodh's body and brain adapted to the constant motion of a vessel at sea at least enough to keep his food down.

"You are looking so much better this morning, Aodh," the druid told his friend as he emerged from their cabin onto the well of the ship.

"No thanks to you and your vaunted druidical healing abilities," the young shape-shifter grumbled more than half-seriously.

"And what of your own vaunted healing abilities as a shape-shifter which can regrow a severed limb? Too bad your sort of magical healing is entirely inward focussed so you cannot heal another person."

"I'll leave that task to you and to Surgeon Durban."

The truth was that seasickness could not be healed by magic or natural medicine because it was not a true illness in the sense of a malfunction of the body. Brain and body were working fine, just not in harness.

As a shape-shifter Aodh was even less body shy than the twins and like them often went about sky-clad when not on duty. Strictly speaking only Liam and Nathan had shipboard duties as opposed to roles in shore parties when Aodh wore his forest ranger uniform. Aodh had taken a leave of absence from his post on the strength of Lord Madden Sexton's assurances that the other rangers could cover his patrol area now that young Dylan the beast master was back from the campaign in the Western Dividing Range against a holdout infestation of trolls.

The flotilla was under the overall command of Nathan's first captain Commodore Sir Jan Dekker, the illustrious hero of the naval war against the trolls. Dekker had been knighted, promoted, and decorated with the nation's highest award for valor for the Petrel's unprecedented single ship action against a flotilla of fifteen troll longships carrying a thousand armed trolls. Dekker now flew his broad pennant, the ensign of a commodore, on the Cormorant a frigate helmed by Captain Dahlgren, Dekker's former executive officer and then successor as captain of the Petrel.

The extra accommodations used on the Arctic Tern for the twins, Drew, Aodh, Dahl, and the natural philosophers were devoted on the Cormorant to the commodore and his staff. Captain Dahlren commanded and fought the flagship. Dekker was in over all command of the squadron and of the expedition.

"Stand by to come about!" came a shout.

"Come about? What the hell does that mean, anyway?" Aodh grumbled then added:

"All this nautical lingo is like a foreign language: 'Come about' not to be confused with 'come to,' and a rope isn't a rope but a line, and a sheet is not a rectangular piece of fabric. Instead it's a rope attached to a 'clew' which the corner of a sail, not evidence of a crime. And why in the hell does the call go out to 'heave to' when they bring the ship to a halt at sea? The sailors don't heave anything, either to or fro, as far as I can tell."

[Heaving to meant stopping a sailing vessel by lashing the helm in opposition to the sails, letting the vessel gradually drift to leeward, the speed of the drift depending on the vessel's design.]

Liam chuckled at his friend's grousing.

"You're not saying anything I didn't say myself back in the day when I first sailed aboard the Petrel. There is a lot of nautical lingo, but you will soon get used to it. In time it will become second nature."

The shouted warning about heaving to had come from Sailing Master Crawley the highest ranking warrant officer aboard, a professional seaman and specialist in navigation rather than a military commander. The master's main duty was navigation. He calculated the ship's position at least daily and set the sails as appropriate for the designated course and wind and sea conditions. It was the master rather than the captain who made the entries in the official log about position and weather. During combat, he stood on the quarterdeck next to the captain.

"Good Morning Captain," Crawley said as Nathan joined him on the quarterdeck. "We've a fair wind at our backs and clear skies ahead. Our bearing is 220 degrees on a starboard tack on a base course heading due south."

"Very good, Mr. Crawley. Let's hope we make a landfall before we reach the polar seas."

Actually the plan was for the flotilla to turn once they reached the fiftieth parallel then to sail a zig-zag course quartering the Southern Ocean.

Three days later the flotilla made landfall at an uninhabited coral atoll composed of some two dozen flat and low-lying islands and islets lying in a broken circle some five miles in diameter (8 km) and open to the North. The atoll had a total land area of only seven square miles. The waters of the lagoon were mostly shallow, barely up to a tall man's chest with a bottom of sand and mud dotted here and there with coral heads. A good swatch of the southern half of the lagoon was dry sand at low tide or muddy flats studded with shallow pools.

The sloop had a try at finding a safe passage into the lagoon, but despite its shallow draft had to turn back after first nearly colliding with a coral head and then briefly stranding herself on the mud flat. Commodore Dekker indicated that the Arctic Tern should try next, despite its greater draft. Dekker knew that Nathan's magical gift of delving (or sounding in naval terms) would let him find a safe passage through the coral reef and find a suitable anchorage. And so Nathan did, finding a channel through the mud flats which led to a satisfactory embayment and landing point on the inner side of the main island.

"We've never seen a circle of islands like these." Jemsen remarked to the geologist Johan Klutz as the ship dropped anchor.

"It's a coral atoll, a ring of islands which originates as a normal fringing reef around a volcanic island. Over the ages, as the magma below cools or recedes, or the loosely consolidated ash and lava slump into the sea, the islands themselves slowly sink. Meanwhile the growth of the coral reefs upward towards the light at the surface keeps pace with the subsidence though all the while the reef is getting farther and farther from the sinking and receding shoreline of the island. In time the summit of the sunken island forms the bottom of a shallow lagoon surrounded by a nearly circular string of reefs and low islands created by the deposition of volcanic sand which is then anchored by vegetation."

"We've seen coral reefs in the Northern Ocean and even dove underwater to explore them, but those reefs were never arrayed in a circle."

"No reason you couldn't go diving here too, if we lay over for a few days, as I suspect the Commodore intends. You should have plenty of time for some fun. The sailors will be occupied in taking soundings and making charts for the navigators who follow after us. The atoll could offer a haven to ships caught in the mighty cyclonic storms that ravaged the open ocean."

So the friends all went diving, all except Nathan whose duties kept him aboard the Arctic Tern. And what a gaggle of boyish beauties they were all sky-clad, tanned, toned, and glabrous. You could be forgiven for taking them for a string of high class rent boys out for some fun.

Drew was the only red-head, an auburn haired twink who stood only five foot zero and weighed but a hundred pounds. The twins and Corwin were blond beauties bronzed all over from the kiss of the sun. Liam, Dahl, and Aodh were the brunettes. While Liam was of middle height, the elf-boy was just an inch taller than Drew.

The third brunette was not tanned bronze like the other boys. The skin of shape-shifters never tanned nor burned in the sun, hence the Snow Elves of the New Forest. Of a height with Drew, Aodh was a boy so beautiful he took your breath away. Small, skinny, and smooth muscled, comely as an angel, with a skin like porcelain, and looking utterly fragile and vulnerable Aodh was a melding of the innocent and the wanton, the epitome of a boy in the full bloom of his youth.

Goggles let the boys see clearly underwater. They were also equipped with shin fins made of flexible sheet metal which strapped to the ankle and reached from just back of the toes almost to the knees, folding around the lower leg yet flaring out to the sides.

The downstroke of the scissor or flutter kick delivered the full power of a kick from the hips instead of just from the knees as with old fashioned swim fins which fit over the feet and with much less back kick and splashing. On the surface the shin fins helped keep the legs horizontal, something the slender boys appreciated since their hard bodies were too dense to float motionless.

Swimming in that aqueous world was like taking to the skies except that they were flying through liquid space. Like a bird, you could move at will in all three dimensions or hover effortlessly, much like a hawk circling in an updraft. Flutter kicking at the surface while looking down at the reef was a lot like flying over a landscape. When they spotted something interesting, they jackknifed and dove for a closer look, holding their breath for up to three minutes, letting the boys explore forests and meadows of seaweed, undersea caves, and holes and crannies in reefs.

The underwater world was full of natural wonders. There were corals shaped like the human brain and others like the antlers of a stag. Some resembled large leaves and were flexible enough to bend back and forth with the ocean swell. All manner of brilliantly marked fish swam in these waters. Some were fat and round and slow; others long and lean and quick. Some nibbled on the coral itself, others grazed on seaweed, while various toothy denizens preyed on the rest. Then there were the strangely shaped octopi and sea stars and spiny urchins plus the colorful creatures called sea anemones after the common flower but these were sessile animals armed with stinging tentacles.

From near the bottom they watched smaller fish as they darted into nooks and crannies in the reef at the approach of a predator. Schools of shiny fish swam through the water in a synchronized ballet.

By partnering with a fetcher like Drew or Liam, anyone could enjoy the sensation of flying underwater by holding on to a swim board while his partner moved the board in three dimensions, diving, turning, even rolling it and them as they traveled underwater for as long as they could hold their breath. The twins especially loved the way the flow of water caressed every part of their bodies at once.

Everyone agreed that underwater exploration was a hell of a lot of fun. It was the highlight of their four day stay at the atoll which Dekker named the Coconut Islands for the trees which grew everywhere.

There was no running water on the atoll, not even a pond or a spring. Nevertheless the geologist Johan Klutz surmised that there would be freshwater lenses under the larger islands. Water lenses were underground accumulations of rainwater which percolated down into the soil then floated above denser seawater but did not mix with it due to its lower density.

Delving was one of Jemsen's abilities as an earth wizard. So once Klutz explained what to look for, he had no trouble finding a source of potable water. From that point it was simple enough to bore a shallow well to the lens and refill their water casks. Not that they were in any danger of running out, but it only made sense to keep the water butts topped off.

The workmen marked the well for future navigators. Water lenses could never support a settled agricultural population. If anyone did settle the Coconut Islands they would have to build catchment basins and cisterns for security of supply.

Then it came time to shove off and sail on to who knew where.

Author's Note

The geography of the coral atoll echoes that of the Cocos or Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean on Old Urth.

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This story is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead. It 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, appears in these stories in a supporting rather than starring role. Each story in the sequence focuses on one or a few of the large cast of characters in the ongoing saga which now exceeds Tolstoy's War and Peace in word count, if in no other measure.

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 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.