Elf-Boy's Friends 55
The Southern Ocean
by George Gauthier
Chapter 1 The Naval Campaign
Commodore Dekker's plan was for the sloop to protect their right flank and block any attack on his main body by the enemy warships holding station farther out to sea to keep the weather gage. The three frigates would attack the major concentration of warships, those in the roadstead, supported by the air wing from the carrier.
For the Sandpiper it looked like a very uneven match, a single sloop against fourteen fore-and-aft rigged ketches and sloops. Though they were converted merchantmen and deep sea fishing vessels and not purpose built warships, they were armed with a ballista at the bow and a pair of catapults, one on each beam. The later could fling pots of flammable oil or a dozen small red hot iron balls at an enemy's sails to set them on fire. The raiders were also equipped with boarding crows, essentially a plank with a spike at the end which would nail the attacking vessel to its victim.
Now ship to ship armaments like catapults and ballistas and boarding crow required the raiders to get fairly close to their foes. The flaw in such tactics was that the Sandpiper was a warship equipped with modern stand-off weaponry which could destroy the enemy at long range. Its two magnetic cannon could propel incendiary shells close to a mile or blast canister shot at closer ranges.
Then there were the torpedoes, a stealthy weapon which approached underwater which meant that there was no way to counter a torpedo attack. Torpedoes were neutrally buoyant so a fetcher had no trouble controlling its depth. Operators were trained to tip the torpedo slightly downward or upward so that the water pressing on the dive planes fixed along its sides would help it dive or rise smoothly.
Now the Sandpiper usually carried only six torpedoes but for this attack they had taken a dozen more from the stores aboard the carrier and towed them behind the sloop. On deck were two extra fetchers, Liam and Drew who would help propel the torpedoes, which were of two kinds: incendiaries which set ships on fire and the Long Lance, a kinetic attack weapon which might sink or simply disable an enemy vessel in preparation for boarding and capture or to encourage a surrender.
As the most powerful fetchers, Drew Altair and Liam propelled the Long Lance Torpedoes at high speed toward the two closest enemy ships, not needing to take course corrections from sounders for a surface attack. Sounders came into play for attacks from submersibles below periscope depth.
Both Long Lances struck hard and deep into the enemy hulls. The fetchers yanked them out by main force, the barbs ripping large holes in the hull. Not content to merely disable the enemy Drew and Liam backed their torpedoes off a ways and struck again and again, striking each hull two more times to make sure it would sink. Very soon the decks of the stricken vessels were awash. Both went down fast with only a few quick thinkers among them having thrown off their armor and clung to something which would float.
Drew and Altair turned their attention to another pair of warships and attacked them the same way, though the tip of Liam's torpedo broke off after the third strike, leaving the barbed warhead stuck in the hull. Meanwhile the Sandpiper's regular team directed incendiary torpedoes at the enemy. Their attacks went faster than with the Long Lances. One hit was all it took to set a ship on fire though a second torpedo made its doom certain.
To make matters worse for the raiders the Sandpiper was now within gun range. Captain Anduriel crossed the enemy's T sailing directly across their course, trained the sloop's two cannon to starboard and began lobbing shells at the enemy. Ship after ship went up in flames. The doughty little warship came about, reversed direction, turned her guns to port, and again raked the enemy with her guns. And so it went. The enemy sailed closer but the nimble Sandpiper kept her distance and lead them on.
Only one vessel got anywhere near the Sandpiper, close enough for an elven firecaster to attack the sloop. His first effort was a large ball of clinging fire which sailed across the gap between the ships but fell just short and dropped into the sea generating a cloud of steam. After waiting to get closer he threw a narrow stream of fire aimed at the hull of the sloop.
Liam blocked it. Not sure he could generate white fire yet again that day he called upon his water magic and intercepted the stream of fire with a cresting wave which swamped the flames and put them out. The gunner at the bow of the sloop ended the exchange when he fired canister shot at the firecaster blasting him to ribbons, forestalling Drew who was just then freeing his edged disk from its wooden holster intending to whirl it at the elf and take his head off.
The battle was so one-sided that it became little more than target practice. The Sandpiper destroyed every single enemy ship at the cost of only one casualty and that from an accident; a sailor tripped over a hatch cover and broke his wrist trying to catch his fall.
Yet the result was due as much to the seamanship of captain and crew as to her modern armaments. The enemy had the wind at their backs while the Sandpiper had to deal with an ebbing tide and tricky currents and winds around the headland. Yet they had handled their ship so well as to make the raiders look like a pack of landlubbers.
As for the survivors swimming and floating amid the wreckage of their ships, the Sandpiper left them for the sharks if any were about.
The tactical situation in the roadstead was different. Wide though the bay was, the flotilla had only so much sea room. The main body of the flotilla could not just keep falling back like the sloop to maintain their distance from the enemy. Nor could the water wizards in the flotilla push the enemy ships back with water currents. They were too numerous and too spread out for that tactic to work.
The flotilla would have to hit them hard with naval gunfire to hold them at bay while the carrier's air wing bombed the enemy from above. The approach of the flotilla did make the enemy call off the attack on the harbor so that those ships could regroup with the main body.
The enemy thus numbered forty-seven warships, mostly sloops and ketches, including five of the little fireships which had such a shallow draft as to make a torpedo attack impractical. No matter, each of the frigates could bring six guns at a time to bear in a broadside to starboard or to port or even fore and aft for that matter. The enemy soon found that the worst place to be in a battle with the frigates was aboard a vessel filled with an inflammable liquid. Each was hit by a half-dozen incendiary shells. Huge fires burned the hitherto invincible fireships down to the water line, funeral pyres for their hapless crews.
The frigates turned their guns on the other vessels with similar results. One enemy ship got close enough to engage with a catapult and hurl clusters of small red hot iron balls at the Arctic Tern's sails, but Sailing Master Crawley was a master of magnetism. He invoked his gift -- visible as a grey nimbus which surrounded him -- and grabbed the iron balls magnetically, flinging them right back at the enemy, neatly turning the tables.
Liam took out another vessel which got within ballista range, smashing in its bow and then the bulkheads behind it with a small boulder manipulated telekinetically.
Four enemy vessels broke away from the fight. Blocked from reaching the sea, their crews ran them up on the far shore of the bay, abandoned ship, and fled on foot into the interior.
Nathan Lathrop had made a wager with his fellow frigate captains as to which one would sink the most ships, but, in the end, he tied with captain Dahlgren of the Cormorant with a score of seven.
In truth the trophy should have gone to the sloop, but her commander hadn't been in on the bet. His consolation prizes were a promotion to Lieutenant and later his nation's second highest award for valor, the Shield of the Commonwealth. As an eyewitness and participant in the Sandpiper's fight, Drew celebrated her commander's role in his reporting on the naval battle.
Then too the carrier would have had a claim as well. Her air wing used incendiary bombs to sink even more enemy vessels than the sloop though at the cost of two pilots downed by unlucky shots with levin bolts thrown at long range.
Another autogyro plunged toward the sea after an enemy fetcher propelled a belaying pin through its fuselage snapping the shaft in two and shattering the free-spinning rotor which provided most of the lift. As a fetcher the pilot was not strong enough to hold a missile shield and propel his aerocraft at the same time even if he had been trained in the technique.
With considerable presence of mind the pilot extricated himself from his cockpit even as his aerocraft fell toward the sea and flew over to the nearest frigate using the yoke built into his cuirass. He might need the airfoils of an autogyro to fly any real distance, but a short flight on his own power was within his capabilities.
The townsfolk were all for celebrating, but Dekker told them that the war was not yet won. He reminded them that their enemy likely had reserves and the resources to replace at least some of their losses and resume their depredations. The only thing for it was to destroy their base, burn their shipyards and warehouses of naval stores, kill the experienced shipbuilders who worked in them, and carry off every single anvil their tool and weapons makers used. That would permanently declaw the Communalists till, in the fullness of time, their repugnant system collapsed of its own weight.
That was a job for a massive airstrike. No way Dekker was going to send his ships into unfamiliar narrow waters to bombard their base with guns. Who knew what defenses the enemy had built to block a hostile naval force from their base? They might have blocked channels with hidden piles, or the enemy might use small boats full of fighters to swarm the Navy ships in the narrow waters.
The more he thought about it, the less Dekker liked the idea of attacking the enemy base with just the resources at hand. He needed reinforcements, and thanks to space portals, he could get them.
It took ten days to coordinate with the naval High Command and the base at Southport via Mind Speech, open a portal, and bring reinforcements through it. The augmented flotilla, now designated a task force, was ready to take the offensive. The townsfolk of Argyll watched with as the proud ships of the Commonwealth Navy put out to sea.
The carrier Sovereign of the Seas had temporarily offloaded the extra supplies so she could take aboard the rest of her air wing and replenish her expended munitions: mainly bombs and torpedoes. She had also taken aboard a combat load of Steel Rain, the new anti-personnel weapon which had proven its worth in the campaign against the trolls in the Western Dividing Range.
It was just the latest invention from the fertile mind of the naval architect and inventor Karl-Eike Thyssen. Commodore Dekker's old ship the Petrel had rescued the n fifteen year old castaway from a deserted island in the Great Inland Freshwater Sea and brought him back to civilization. Maybe unleashed him on civilization was a better way of putting it -- the impact of his many inventions had been that significant.
Sailing with the task force was a second aerocraft carrier, the Formidable, sister ship of the Sovereign of the Seas plus an escorting frigate and a cargo ship carrying extra munitions.
Their order of battle was two carriers, Sovereign of the Seas and Formidable, the four heavy frigates Arctic Tern, Cormorant, Gull, and Albatross, and the plucky sloop the Sandpiper.
There was no need for transports to ferry naval infantry into battle. Two regiments totaling four thousand frost giants had been assigned to the campaign. Along with them came their organic field artillery, a battalion of magnetic cannon mounted on limbers. The Frost giants were armed with the larger and more powerful version of the pneumatic air gun to which a bayonet could be fixed for close-in fighting.
The plan was for Liam to deliver that infantry force directly to the battle field via a second space portal. The naval infantry would march straight into the fight from their base on Valentia, engage the enemy, and withdraw when their job was done. Follow-on forces were at the ready if the opposition proved stronger than expected.
Each regiment would go into battle supported by a detachment of war mages typically pairs of firecasters, fetchers, lightning throwers and wielders of ball lightning, with the odd air or weather wizard thrown in.
The flotilla's own war wizards and mages would orbit overhead in autogyros in case their support was needed during the hit and run raid on the enemy capital which the naval infantry had planned.
As its foes had come to learn fighting the Commonwealth was a no-win proposition. It did not win its wars with overwhelming numbers. The Commonwealth fought smart. Because its population was so large, well over one-hundred million, in an emergency it could readily enlist a cadre of mage and wizards in its defense, either in detachments in its regular Army and Navy or as volunteers, called up during hostilities, much as Klutz and Blok had been.
Moreover, that edge in magical support was reinforced by an industrial economy with numberless mines, smelters, foundries, and manufactories linked by iron roads and paved highways, an economy able to churn out the instruments of war in very large numbers many of them revolutionary innovations like autogyros, air guns, magnetic cannon, submersibles, and torpedoes, and even the bicycles which allowed dragoons to deploy much faster along the road network of the Commonwealth than atop live mounts.
The naval campaign would be an exercise in force projection with a vengeance. Normally that phrase referred to the ability of a state to rapidly deploy and sustain military forces well beyond the bounds of its territory. Space portals, or rifts as some called them, added a whole new dimension both for transport and for communication, though admittedly the druid's Mind Speech was even handier for the latter purpose.
The task force met no challenge as it sailed south along the coast of what they had learned was a small continent which the locals called Sarmantia. The climate this far south was temperate rather than sub-tropical. Cooler weather to fight in was something the Frost Giants would appreciate when they redeployed from the tropics.
As it turned out, this was one of those rare battles where the plan largely survived contact with the main body of the enemy. The Communalists had no idea that flight was possible much less any notion of aerial reconnaissance, so they had done nothing to camouflage or conceal their military installations. Scouts had no trouble pinpointing their naval base, their shipyards, and the warehouses full of naval stores, all of which were fire-bombed into ashes. With the attack timed for mid-morning the bombs which destroyed the shipyards also killed their skilled craftsmen such as shipwrights and carpenters.
The land campaign was less of a surprise to the enemy as far as timing went. The massive airstrike had stirred up a hornets' nest and given their army and gendarmerie the chance to muster in the main square of their capital where they took cover behind barricades made with stone pavers taken up from the surrounding streets. All told they numbered some eight thousand men and elves.
The barricades largely neutralized the direct fire of the air guns of the Frost Giants who also found themselves unable to deploy from column of march into a battle line hemmed in as they were by the narrow streets leading to the square. Dozens of enemy ballistas poked out second and third storey windows trained at the exits of the streets threatening to turn them into killing grounds. In the press of troops there was little room to emplace magnetic cannon. So a direct assault would prove costly.
The war wizards and mages orbiting overhead out of arrow range could have attacked the defenders but only after they neutralized the mages among the defenders. Several mages from the fleet wielded ball lightning which could counter levin bolts, and the missile shield raised by fetchers like Liam could defeat any attack by enemy counterparts. Similarly the firecasters in the fleet could block anti-aerocraft fire from the ground. However an air-to-ground battle fought with magic would inflict extensive collateral damage on the town and likely set it afire, endangering non-combatants.
So the attack was made with Steel Rain, a kinetic energy weapon dropped from aerocraft in great numbers. Looking like pointy tear drops with tiny fins crimped to the back end to stabilize their descent, they were a bit less than two inches long and half an inch thick.
Autogyros from the two aerocraft carriers stationed off shore made scores of sorties and dropped tens of thousands on the things from an altitude of four thousand feet. As they fell gravity accelerated the weapons to three hundred miles per hour, enough to punch through a shield or armor and keep going. Thanks to hydrostatic shock their momentum was deadly regardless of where they hit a body. Perhaps twenty percent of the enemy force survived the attack. The naval infantry left the wounded for the locals to care for.
In the rest of the town the naval infantry acted with restraint. They did not torch the residential districts or even the public buildings though they did remove official records and toss them onto huge bonfires. They also emptied the treasury of its silver and gold, but took the wealth as reparations to the towns and villages on the Benign Coast which had been attacked.
The Frost Giants made sure to round up the anvils in every smithy or weapons shop. There was no instances of looting or rape, and the land forces spared all of the town's inhabitants who stood aside and did not try to resist them.
In short the operation was a complete success with negligible casualties among the Commonwealth forces. The task force sailed back to Argyll and joined in celebrating the lifting of the deadly threat to the Benign Coast.
Chapter 2 The Benign Coast
The Commonwealth task force returned to the Benign Coast, stopping along the way at the more prominent towns like Rockport to convey the news that the threat from raiders was ended forever. The townsfolk of Argyll celebrated with a festival and lionized the sailors and naval infantry who had delivered them from certain death.
They were especially grateful and even stood in awe of the heavy hitters, the magic users from the Commonwealth who had fought with them against the land invasion. The druid Lord Dahlderon had single-handedly neutralized the enemy reserve of two thousand, after intimidating their foes with grisly individual deaths, and finally fought like a whirlwind atop the wall.
The tiny pale youth, the shape shifter Sir Aodh of Llangollen and Elysion, had executed those who had violated the sanctity of the parley then fought in close combat atop the wall, using his natural weapons as a black panther and then his skills in the martial arts, facing armed raiders while he was alone, outnumbered, empty-handed, and stark naked.
Those with him had remarked his aplomb when, just after the repulse of the enemy, Aodh took an impromptu shower to wash away the sweat, and dust, and blood, lifting and upending, apparently without strain, a heavy water bucket which must have weighed sixty or seventy pounds, which was quite a feat for a short and slightly built youth like him: all of five foot zero and weighing only a hundred pounds himself.
The war wizard Sir Liam had unleashed white fire on the enemy attack on the East wall of the town, disintegrating three thousand of the enemy. The earth wizard Sir Jemen had opened a channel from the dry moat to the ocean, drowning the assault force at the South wall. His twin Sir Karel had created sun mirrors whose heat beams turned the enemy into ashen simulacra of themselves.
In the naval battle just off Argyll, the powerful fetchers Sir Liam and Sir Drew Altair had flown out to the sloop Sandpiper then sunk enemy ships with their fearsome Long Lance torpedoes which were tipped with heavy barbed spearheads. Another team aboard the sloop had set ships afire with incendiary torpedoes while the ship's two magnetic cannon had sunk the rest. In the main action in the bay, the three heavy frigates Arctic Tern, Cormorant, and Gull had sunk many enemy ships with naval gunfire, though the honors really went to the air wing of the aerocraft carrier Sovereign of the Seas.
Finally, joined by reinforcements arriving from the distant Commonwealth of the Long River via a space portal, a naval task force had sailed south to the enemy's base and destroyed their offensive capability, burning their shipyards and warehouses of naval stores and killing the skilled shipwrights and carpenters who might in time have been able to restore their losses in ships.
At a conference with the city fathers of Argyll Commodore Dekker reported that the very next day his reinforcements would return to the Commonwealth via a space portal. His own reconstituted flotilla would also put out to sea and sail on to new adventures.
The mayor expressed his hope that trade relations might someday be established with the Commonwealth despite the great distances. The people of the Benign Coast had so much to learn from their new friends. From what they had seen for themselves and the stories told by the sailors of the Commonwealth, his own people now knew that there was a whole modern world out there across the sea which they would very much like to be a part of. Commodore Dekker held out this hope:
"It won't happen right away, but I am fairly sure that our fishing fleets will start to exploit the deep sea fisheries of the great gyre, establishing bases on the islands we have claimed for the Commonwealth. It will be on these islands that our fishermen preserve their catch by drying, salting, and refrigeration. Now our own shores and the Benign Coast are about the same distance from these new fishing grounds. And the species out there like tuna and hake are different from those your own fishermen exploit. Your country then would be a natural market for this new resource."
"I am not sure all our fisher folk would welcome the competition."
"Maybe not, but the population as a whole would have more choices and better nutrition. It has not escaped our notice that you do not have extensive grasslands on which to raise cattle. And imports from the gyre will help your growing population to avoid overexploiting your current fishing grounds."
"More generally there is the principle that free trade benefits everyone, else it would not exist. Where fisherman go, merchants soon follow. If you can develop an export trade you could pay for imports for modern manufactures, everything from inexpensive pencils to costly autogyros."
"Couldn't we pay for those things with gold or silver?"
Dekker shook his head.
"No, not in the long run. Your coinage was already hampered by a shortage of silver. The treasure we took from the Communalists should ease that problem for now, but if you have to pay for imports, your difficulties will recur."
"Coinage facilitates trade, but precious metals are mostly useless in themselves. You cannot eat gold or make tools from it, just decorative baubles. Silver is good for making mirrors and not much else. Trade ultimately depends on an exchange of goods and services, not precious metals."
"Look then for what the Benign Coast might offer the Commonwealth. A good place to start would be that vanilla flavoring of yours which the twins rave about. It should sell well abroad, likely at a lucrative price not short of what saffron brings. Why don't you send samples with the twins? Their commercial contacts could set things in motion."
"My government might be interested in berthing rights for our navy. Understand, we would not seek permission to build a naval base with all its own support services. Our ships would use your civilian ports and would obtain goods and services on commercial terms. That would create businesses and jobs in shipyards, chandleries, warehouses for naval stores and comestibles, dock workers, etc."
"Much depends on whether we and you really will want a naval presence in these seas. Only the future will tell. But don't worry. This is not the last you will see of ships from the Commonwealth. Now that we know who and where you are, further seaborne contact is inevitable. Remember, a naval task force won't have to sail for weeks to get here but can make the crossing in a single day thanks to space portals."
The next day Liam opened a portal large enough for even an aerocraft carrier to sail through. The carrier Formidable and her accompanying frigate and cargo vessel sailed through it back to their home station at Southport. The Sovereign of the Seas was to keep her full air wing aboard for the rest to their voyage. Who knew what foes the flotilla might encounter next?
The extra supplies she had offloaded for the strike against the enemy capital were loaded onto two of the enemy vessels which had been deliberately run aground and abandoned. Originally armed with of two catapults and a ballista, the new naval auxiliaries now mounted a pair of swivel guns. Both were crewed by local civilians, ordinary sailors but now proud to be considered explorers.
The inhabitants of the Benign Coast would thus have a chance to explore this continent of Sarmantia of which they really knew little. By staying in touch with the folks from the Commonwealth, the locals could learn much about their civilization and their technologies.
Before they set off into the unknown, Dekker drilled his crews. They practiced going to general quarters, recovering a man gone overboard, and fighting fires. A conflagration aboard a wooden ship was just about the worst thing that could happen to it, even worse that getting holed on a reef. Not every ship had a firecaster aboard, and for all their ability to put a fire out with a thought, fire wizards were only human. They might be laid low by enemy action or by injury or disease or by misadventure. The military always sought redundancy in its important capabilities.
The frigates and the sloop were equipped with a pair of human-powered pumps, one fore and one aft. Four seamen, two on each side, grasped the chest high handles and alternated their down strokes. The pumps were fully reversible. Hoses over the side could pull water from the sea to douse fires, or, in case of flooding below decks, water could be pumped out of the ship and over the side.
Amidships was a fire suppression tower ten foot high where a water wizard manned a water cannon, a brass tube four feet long with an adjustable nozzle. Equipped with elevating and traversing mechanisms, it could direct a powerful jet of water at a fire or at an enemy vessel to counter boarders. Driven by water magic instead of a pump, the jet was powerful enough to knock a man down and likely wash him overboard if he did not grab onto something. Alternatively it could clear a path for their own boarders when the mission was to capture an enemy vessel rather than sink it.
The last part of the leave taking was to bring several war wizards through a portal to Argyll so that they too might open portals from Valentia to Sarmantia if need be. Sir Willet Hanford and Sir Rikkard and their aides came through along with a couple of other wizards. Sir Willet was not entirely pleased to find that Liam's portal deposited him to the deck of the Arctic Tern which was anchored just outside the fortified port.
"Liam! Why in tarnation did you bring me aboard a ship? You know how horribly ill I get from seasickness."
"Yes, I do, Sir Willet, but not to worry. There is a dead calm today, so you won't have to experience the rocking of oceanic swells. Bringing you to this spot will let you open a portal for other ships to sail directly to the Benign Coast. Now we have a boat waiting to take you and the others ashore. If you will step over to the pilot ladder..."
"I shall do no such thing, my dear boy. If I am going to do any stepping it will be through a portal of my own creation to take me directly to that dock at the end of the harbor where I see that a reception committee waiting for us. Who is with me?"
Of course the entire party stepped through with Sir Willet. Why bother with a ship's gig?
From the point of view of Sir Willet's aide Axel Wilde the best part of the deal was that he got to spend three days with his boyfriends. Who knew when they might next have so much quality time? So they all made the most of their opportunity.
Now Axel Wilde had the gift of teleportation which could whisk him instantly to any spot he had once visited via a space portal. Drew gave him his latest reporting to deliver to the Capital Intelligencer while Commodore Dekker had him relay the flotilla's latest official dispatches to the High Command.
The twins explained about the commercial opportunities with vanilla and appointed Axel as their intermediary with their business agent, the wily dwarf Lennart whose job it would be to devise a plan to market this new flavoring to the mainland market. Now a wizard's aide would not normally get involved with a commercial venture while on duty, but promoting trade with the Benign Coast was deemed to be of strategic importance.
While Aodh and Lennart arranged things on Valentia the locals were to devise plans to ramp up production of the extract, depending on how long it would take to bring fresh plantings to maturity. There was little chance that cultivation abroad would produce vanilla. Without the bee, the only alternative was hand pollination, and anyway, the cultivation and harvesting of vanilla was a complex, tricky, and labor intensive business.
Chapter 3 At Sea
Came the day and the flotilla put out to sea. The reconstituted flotilla now consisted of one fully equipped and manned aerocraft carrier, three heavy frigates, one sloop, and two auxiliary cargo ships.
Once out of sight of land, all the boys except Nathan chucked their uniforms and went about sky clad, much to the delight of those in the crew who fancied pretty boys and who practically swooned at this conspicuous display of youthful male concupiscence. There were so many lovely bodies, all of them smooth and glabrous, without a feather on them anywhere, not even at the fork of their legs. These boys were natural exhibitionists, happy to flaunt the toned and taut bodies they had grown into as teenagers and retained still thanks to healing magic or elven heritage.
In keeping with the proprieties aboard a naval vessel they did dress for meals if only in those low-rise square-cut short shorts which the twins had made fashionable back home. Drew Altair liked to pair them with narrow suspenders of a shade of red considerably brighter than his own auburn locks. The straps just kissed the outer rim of his small aureoles and framed his corrugated belly.
Liam liked to climb the rigging and sit on the crow's perch and scan the horizon, much as he had done in his early days in the Navy aboard the Petrel. Ships still posted lookouts, though these days long range scouts soared in flying wings to scout the seas beyond the horizon. Liam relished the feel of the wind in his hair and the way it touched him everywhere at once, like a lover with a hundred hands. Then there was the way the sun kissed his whole body, turning it that tawny bronze which bespoke a boy who spent much of his time outdoors not wearing a stitch.
The twins developed their upper body strength by climbing ropes, repeatedly hauling themselves high using just their arms then lowering themselves down to the deck. Upper body exercise was important now that they trained so much less with the bow.
Dahl liked to call up a pod of dolphins and dive into the ocean to ride one of the cetaceans as the pod kept pace with the ship. When his ride was over, he steered his mount close to the hull and used gravitational repulsion to lift himself onto the deck then rewarded his mount by directing a school of tasty fish into the path of the pod.
In keeping with his feline nature, Aodh was not much interested in training for cardiovascular fitness. Cats did not run their prey down as dogs and wolves do, so stamina was less important than with canids. Felines were stalk and pounce predators with a fast twitch musculature which made for burst strength rather than endurance.
So Aodh practiced climbing skills and acrobatics. A favorite routine stressed and strengthened almost every muscle in the body at once and was a visual delight to onlookers. He would reach up with hands spread and grasp a spar then repeatedly lift his body up, raise his bent legs, letting their weight swing his body back, and touch the other side of the spar with the tops of his feet. Onlookers watched entranced as the muscles of his shoulder, back, butt, abdomen, and legs bunched and flexed erotically.
Aodh also engaged in practice bouts in the martial arts disciplines facing off against Drew, Liam, and the twins. Even more than most, as a wir Aodh had little use for clothing, but shape shifters had pearly skins which neither tanned nor burned from the sun, so he might curl up on deck for a nap, but that was to take advantage of the breeze, not to sun himself.
Nathan's preferred exercise was sword practice with cutlass and buckler which developed agility, reflexes, and stamina, as well as the upper body.
Every once in a while, the flotilla hove to and gave anyone who cared to a chance to go in for a swim. No one swam very far from the ships. Nathan and the other sounders kept watch for sea monsters. Dahl's druidical magic could discourage marine predators unless they were in a feeding frenzy.
Councillors Nottmeyer and Ulliel traveled with their countrymen aboard one of the cargo auxiliaries. At each port on the Benign Coast their ship sailed alone into the harbor to assure the locals that the flotilla was friendly, and that they were the allies who had defeated the Communalists. That assured the flotilla a good reception everywhere they stopped.
The pair had started sketching a visual record of their voyage. First they sketched the ships of the flotilla and their weaponry. Next they sailed aboard each type of ship for a couple of days and made sketches of the crew working the ship, setting sail or engaged in air operations. Nothing was posed; their candid sketches were visual notes for more finished drawings done at leisure.
Now Nottmeyer and Ulliel were very much taken with the twins and Aodh and the rest of the lovely lads though as yet none of them had given any indication that the pairs' interest in them was returned. Still they had hopes. Both were youthful and good-looking. The human Gaspard Nottmeyer was a tall well-built blond in his late twenties while Ulliel had the ageless pretty-boy looks of his race. Alas, though the two chatted the boys up every chance they got, as yet they had made no progress in getting any of them into bed. For all the human's gift of empathy he could not find a way to interest the lovely visitors.
What to do? It was the elf who got the idea of drawing nude portraits of the boys. The boys had to admit that the two artists had talent, not only for sketching but for composition. With that conceded, the pair asked whether the boys would be willing to pose for full length portraits.
"No artists ever had finer models to work with. You boys must realize how terribly beautiful and sexy you all are. You really owe it to the world to make a permanent record of your exquisite physical beauty. Your images will be part of the memorial our town is planning as a remembrance of your war with the Communalists and the opening of the Benign Coast to the wider world."
"Let me guess," Drew began dryly, "you two will want us to pose in the nude like artists' models do."
"But of course. The way you guys run around naked every chance you get anyway, so you're not shy. You're a gaggle of exhibitionists if the truth were known."
"Guilty as charged. Tell you what. Give me the rights to publish your sketches in the book I intend to write about our expedition and you have a deal. My publisher can pay a modest royalty for any of your artwork that we use, much as we do with the twins who always do our terrain sketches and landscapes. We can safely predict that this book will be another best seller."
"Best-sellers are all that those two ever write," Jemsen supplied helpfully. "They churn out one best-seller after another all of which are real page turners, even to those of us who actually lived through the events they relate."
The sketches Ulliel and Gaspard Nottmeyer drew were erotic without being overly graphic. So the pose chosen for the twins had them grappling each other as wrestlers rather than as lovers. Liam and Drew were posed in a embrace but done in mid-air, lifting each other telekinetically above the deck and pressing their bodies together. Aodh posed first as a sleeping youth, looking impossibly comely, a veritable angel in repose. As a black panther, he reared up with front paws raised and claws extended as he snarled fiercely. Nathan posed on the quarterdeck in uniform though bared to the hips, cutlass held at the ready. The druid was captured as if in the midst of hurling an ironwood throwing knife, a pose which highlighted the tension in his exquisite musculature.
After looking them over Drew nodded. "Now is there anything else we boys can do for you?" he asked.
"Is there ever. You must realize that both of us are burning with desire for all of you. How could it be otherwise? All you boys are walking wet dreams. I hope I have not been presumptuous or offensive."
"How can sincere compliments ever be offensive? Professions of fervent desire are perfectly natural coming from males who fancy pretty boys like us. It's been like that all our lives. Anyway we are not cock teases. We knew from the start where this was heading. So you two are going to get your wish. For starters you Gustav and I will pair off while Ulliel takes up with his fellow elf, the druid. How does that sound?"
"Heavenly!"
And so it proved to be.
Chapter 4 Maelstrom
Some days later the flotilla sighted a sandy headland crowned with pines gnarled and stunted and sand blasted by the constant onshore wind. The cape turned out to be an inflection point where the northerly trending coast bent eastward. This Northwest Cape, as they dubbed it, extended far out to sea as an underwater reef with no more than a fathom of water above the sea bottom.
It did not help that even on calm days surf churned the water into beach foam or spume, which itself was a hazard, as the druid warned.
"That sea foam is a fathom thick, so it can conceal physical hazards like rocks and reefs and storm debris. Also the smell tells me that the remnants of a toxic algal bloom are mixed in with the sea foam. Don't let it get on your skin or into your lungs."
Beyond the cape lay a jumble of rocky islets which channeled and squeezed the currents and the constant onshore winds between them. What looked like a wide passage between two widely separated islets was blocked by a maelstrom, a series of whirlpools with currents running twenty knots, faster than their ships could sail.
"You're looking awfully anxious Aodh," Nathan Lathrop observed.
"Maybe it is just the landlubber in me, but I've heard that a giant whirlpool can suck an entire ship down into the depths taking all hands with her."
"We have heard that tale too," Professor Scolari noted, speaking for himself and his colleagues.
"Tales told by sailors in their cups," Nathan assured them dismissively.
"That's what you said about the Kraken," Aodh pointed out, "and look what happened."
Nathan nodded to concede the point, then explained:
"The difference is that whirlpools are a known marine hazard but are dangerous mostly to small craft which can be swamped by the turbulent waters. A stout ship like the Arctic Tern would likely suffer little damage, though I would worry about her rudder and the strain on her standing rigging. Our long range aerial scouts give us plenty of warning. We would never be caught by surprise when the vortex reforms as it does after each slack period. Ships like ours, built for ocean navigation, can simply steer well clear of such dangers."
Nathan Lathrop used his gift to sound the roiled waters. He discovered that the vortexes were formed by the combination of powerful semi-diurnal tides, sea currents, strong local winds, and the unusual shape of the seabed. A shallow ridge forced the flows upward forming eddies and vortexes. The result was an uncrossable maelstrom.
On top of everything else, the iron-bearing rocks of the islands made compass needles point erratically. Only their navigators' gift of Unerring Direction kept them sailing a true course.
The upshot was that navigation in the violent seas off the cape was so hazardous as to be impossible without magical assistance. Even with the aid of sounders and weather, water, or air wizards it would be dangerous.
In the end the flotilla did not try to round the cape but, from caution, swung wide and headed north, out to sea, well away from land, before angling back toward the coastline once again.
The folks they later met along the coast told them that Northwest Cape was known as the graveyard of lost ships. They had long since given up efforts to round the cape with ships capable only of short range coastwise travel. So no wonder there was no seaborne commerce between the Benign Coast and this northern stretch of the continent of Sarmantia.
Late that afternoon the flotilla dropped anchor in a sheltered cove with white sandy beaches beyond which lay uninhabited forest lands. Commodore Dekker intended to wait there all the next day while sending our long range scouts on flying wings. With the Arctic Tern not under sail at the moment, her passengers gathered on the quarterdeck and studied the coast through far-viewer tubes.
The twins remarked on a species of trees which did not stand vertically like the other trees growing around them but had trunks which slanted toward the North.
The druid smiled at this latest of the endless questions with which the insatiably curious twins plied their sometimes exasperated interlocutors. But then, the keen minds of the twins were one of their most attractive qualities.
"Unlike all other trees, these pines grow toward the noonday sun rather than straight up toward the sky. Also at these higher southern latitudes the slant is more pronounced than closer to the equator. On the equator itself, they stand as straight at any other species while in northern latitudes, their trunks slant toward the South. Now being made of solid wood, trees cannot turn like sunflowers, but they do orient their growth toward the sun. It is just one more of Nature's wonders."
"And useful too for scouting your surroundings!" Karel enthused.
"How so?"
It was Jemsen who answered.
"What my brother is getting at is that it is far easier for a scout who needs to see the lay of the land to ascend a slanting trunk than to scramble up the vertical trunk of a normal tree. The former is almost a walk, the latter a hard climb which sometimes requires a rope, spikes, and/or a grapnel. Scouts will readily take advantage of an easy way to the top, and these slanted trunks certainly are that."
"Remember," Karel added. "we twins started out as hunters, explorers, and Army scouts, so scouting is second nature to us. Our original modest magical gift of Unerring Direction was perfectly suited those professions, far more so than our later major gifts of air and earth wizardry. "
"I mean powerful gifts like those can be useful only episodically as in combat or when you get in a jam or you want to help, protect or rescue others. Look at Corwin's ability to wield ball-lightning, something that is useful only in combat. You cannot make a living with it unless like Liam, Axel or Sir Willet you are a full-time member of the military."
"Right. Despite being heavy hitters in combat Drew and Corwin support themselves with their pens, just as Jemsen and I do with your field guides and other publications."
"That is true as far as it goes," Drew allowed, "but though my gift of telekinesis does not pay the bills for me it is very much woven into my daily life whether as pilot of my autogyro or just fetching a book from the upper shelf of our library or an apple from a bowl of fruit. Also I never have the annoyance of having to bend over to pick up something I have dropped on the floor. Instead it just flies back into my hand."
"Not to mention the romantic possibilities with telekinesis," Liam reminded him, which brought a smile to everyone's face.
"And let's not forget," Liam added, "how many fetchers make a good living these days with telekineses, moving freight and passenger trains on the iron roads, street cars, aerocraft, and tricycle cabs."
"As a naval officer," Nathan began, "my gift of sounding is well suited to my profession. Not only can I sense what lies below the surface I can see in pitch dark on a night when a normal person cannot see the hand in front of his face."
"It's different with us shape shifters." Aodh pointed out. "Our dual magical nature is who we are. That is why we are forever switching forms to our animal shape and going on walk about."
"And for us druids," Dahl added, "ours is not just a profession, it is a calling that comes with the powers which let us carry our mission as the guardians of the planet's biosphere."
"We druids live comfortably but simply and have no use for luxury, ostentation, or display, as Aodh can tell you himself since we live with the Klarendes clan in their manor house at Elysion. Mostly the wealth of our order goes to worthy causes like afforestation and reforestation or helping the victims of ecological disasters like crop blights, an invasion of army ants, and the like."
"In any event unlike a government we don't levy taxes nor do we solicit or accept donations. And we do not charge for our services either. We are entirely self-supporting. For instance, some of the most costly spices are grown on our crop lands. Even elves don't have Green Thumbs like ours. And with space portals, we can deliver to our wholesalers across the continent with no time lost in transit, no spoilage, and with minimal expenses for transportation."
"So, portals do have a commercial application after all, but only for our own use. We druids have no desire to compete with iron roads or river or seaborne commerce."
"Direct magic aside," Aodh noted, "let's not overlook how magic has doubled or tripled our physical powers giving us great strength, speed, reflexes, stamina, and keen senses which are very much a part of our daily lives."
"Including in bed," Liam pointed out. "Our love lives are supercharged athletically and acrobatically in ways which ordinary mortals can only envy."
"Tell us about it!" chorused Ulliel and Gaspard Nottmeyer.
Chapter 5 The Land of the Elephants
The next day, the boys picnicked and frolicked on the beach. Even Nathan got shore leave so he could join them. Stripping off to reveal their hard bodies and sculpted physiques the nude boys plunged into the warm water and swam to shore to meet up with the ship's boat which the three natural philosophers had rowed ashore carrying the picnic supplies plus their own equipment.
The boys engaged in swimming and the grab ass water sports of which young males were so fond but later turned to more intimate pleasures. Disporting themselves in pairs or in a three way they made love joyfully in a passionate celebration of life, youth, and beauty. The twins double-teamed the elf-boy, spitting him at both ends, while the naval officer paired off with his war wizard boyfriend and the auburn-haired journalist with the exotic shape shifter.
A rousing good time was had by all.
Meanwhile the three natural philosophers headed into the open forest with their collecting equipment in hand, looking for geological, zoological, and botanical specimens. They thought they should be safe enough without any escort. All three went armed with airguns. Besides the geologist Johan Klutz was a strong fetcher while his zoologist colleague Evander Blok could hurl lightning bolts.
Professor Scolari could scarcely contain his delight as he dug up two entirely new species of fungi including some of their underground mycelia (the vegetative part of the fungus made of fine white filaments) and wrapped them in paper. These would be the type specimens for the fungarium, which was the technical name for a collection of preserved fungi, just as a collection of dried plants was called an herbarium.
"I daresay these represent not just two new species or genera but two whole families of fungi."
Blok had got ahead of the other two who were engrossed in examining specimens in their respective disciplines. As luck would have it, he came face to face with an elephant. It stood eight feet tall at the shoulder and weighed four tons so it looked like an adult, only it wasn't.
Now elephants can be touchy and even aggressive. Unprovoked attacks on buffalo or rhino are not unknown. Whatever the reason, this particular specimen took umbrage at Blok's presence and trumpeted an angry challenge. The zoologist back pedaled, not daring to turn his back on the threat, hoping that putting some distance between them would mollify the irritated pachyderm. He knew that it was impossible to outrun an elephant. Too heavy to gallop, their charge was more like a fast shuffle, a very fast shuffle indeed, given their long legs.
As the beast reached for Blok with its trunk, Blok tried to drive it off with a very weak levin bolt, his equivalent of electrum sparks, directed at the beast's tender trunk with all of its many nerve endings. The animal came to a halt and let out a wail which carried to its mother. She poked her head through the tree line.
Blok's eyes widened as he realized that the specimen he had thought to be an adult was really just a calf of an enormous beast fifteen feet high at the shoulder. Sensing her calf was in danger the mother trumpeted her challenge which was echoed by the others in the herd, mostly females and a few sub-adult males. Their charge shook the earth.
Blok looked around for a tree to climb, but none looked strong enough to withstand a determined attacked by the angry herd. Fortunately Johan Klutz was wearing a flying yoke so he invoked his telekinesis and flew to Blok's side then flew him back to the beach, levitating Scolari too as he passed his position.
"Wow, that was a close call." Blok allowed. "Thanks for getting us out of a tight spot, Johan."
"You're not out of danger yet," the druid observed. "The herd you roused is still coming. The elephants saw which way you flew and anyway we are upwind of the herd, so they can follow you by scent alone."
"Maybe all of us should pile into my gig and let Liam propel it telekinetically back to the ship." Nathan offered.
"Why should we let a bunch of wild animals drive us away?" Drew asked. "Surely they are no match for our powers and our weapons. Let's have the Arctic Tern lob a few incendiary shells a bit in front of the herd to scare them and make them turn away."
"There is no time for that." Nathan told him. "It takes several minutes for the ship to go to general quarters and to begin a fire mission."
"Maybe I can help," Karel offered." I know we don't really want to hurt the animals so maybe I should call up a land spout and direct it at the herd, making them confront a foe larger than themselves for the first time in their lives. I dare say they would not care much for the noise and the sting of its whirling sands."
"That isn't a bad idea Karel, but it's too late for such a tactic. Look here they come, practically on top of us."
"Quick Jemsen, dig a trench just beyond the beach," Aodh urged the senior twin, "but slant the outer wall so the elephants don't fall in and break their legs. It's how we kept brontotheres away from our croplands back home."
<Another good idea, Aodh, but I've got this,> the druid broadcast confidently via Mind Speech. <I'll chase the elephants away with a swarm of bees. I'd like your assistance Liam with the concealment component of this trick. You are better at Concealment than I am.>
Gesturing to aid his concentration the young druid invoked his psychic control over animals, but did not simply command them to stop. Instead he put into their minds the notion and the sound of a swarm of angry bees. To this aural stimulus Liam added a visual one, a concealment which created the appearance of a bee swarm rising from the nest in the ground just in front of the herd.
That brought the charge to an abrupt halt. Trumpeting their fear, the panicked elephants turned and ran off as fast as they could to get away from the imaginary bees.
Resuming sonic speech, the druid told the others:
"I went for finesse instead of raw magical power so I didn't have to seize full control of their minds, which is a courtesy I extend to the more intelligent animals like elephants. Once I had their attention, all I had to do was convince them that they were running toward a swarm of bees. My psychic gift put the idea in their heads and made them hear the buzzing, and Liam's concealment let them see the swarm with their own eyes, so to speak."
"Glad I could help, but why do elephants fear bees so much?" Liam asked. "Surely their thick skins are proof against bee stings."
"Ah, but their thick skins do not protect their eyes, the back of their ears, or the tips of their trunks which are vulnerable and quite sensitive. Elephants know this and avoid angry bees at all costs, as you have just seen."
"Just as well," Jemsen observed. "Those were real monsters, bigger than any elephant I've ever heard of. Air guns would have been useless against them. I doubt a bullet could penetrate their skulls or reach the hearts buried so deep in their massive bodies."
Blok supplied the answer:
"Those were straight-tusked elephants, the largest species of all, in fact the largest land mammal known to science. Males have been known to stand eighteen feet at the shoulder, making even mammoths seem puny."
"I am just glad you were able to turn the threat away without harming the animals," Blok told them. "Just like with the Kraken."
Naturally the twins had any number of questions for the zoologist who was happy to have students eager to learn from him. Afterwards Karel expressed his regret:
"Too bad we didn't get a close look at them. So we could sketch them, I mean."
"To my way of thinking we got entirely too close a look, Karel. Not to worry, you'll get your chance later, though not with this particular herd, which will steer clear of us."
The twins had to be satisfied with that.
"Wait a minute," the druid warned abruptly. "I sense that the elephants are in trouble; one of anyway. In its haste to get away from the bees it got stuck in quicksand. Let's help, shall we?"
"These are the same elephants who just tried to trample us?" Nathan asked skeptically.
"That was partly our own fault for intruding into their territory. And then our friend Blok went and zapped one of them."
"Hey! He was coming right at me. And all I gave him was a little jolt, not much stronger than a handful of electrum sparks when I might have blasted his skull and splashed his brains around. How was I to know that he wasn't full-grown but only a calf with a protective mother close by?"
"Your restraint does credit to your profession, Tutor Blok."
"Excuse me," Aodh began, "as you druids acknowledge, protecting the biosphere does not mean saving every single animal. Nature is red in tooth and claw, isn't it? So should we not let nature take her course."
"Only it wasn't Nature that drove the elephant into the quicksand. It was us. The question remains are we willing to help?"
With some grumbling the others conceded Dahl's point and agreed to help the trapped elephant. The three fetchers levitated the whole company and flew them to the scene of the trouble. The hitch was that only Blok had a flying harness. Liam and Drew were in the nude, so they could not levitate themselves, but they could levitate each other and the rest of the party.
The poor beast, a full-grown female, was stuck fast almost up to her knees. She was breathing heavily, clearly exhausted from her struggles, As least she was not sinking any deeper. Contrary to legend a body will not sink all the way into quicksand, but it can be very hard for an animal to extricate itself from the clinging mud.
After the humans landed nearby, the druid used his psychic powers to calm the herd and to explain that the two legs were there to help. One nearly grown male was having none of it and charged.
"Halt!" the druid commanded imperiously, pointing straight at the beast, which came to a sudden stop, quivering with rage at its own helplessness. "Sorry, big fella, but you would only get in the way."
The rest of the herd watched anxiously as the three fetchers and the druid advanced to the edge of the quicksand pit and sized up the situation. Drew took the lead.
"We cannot just yank it out of the quicksand, not the way it is sunk so deep up to its knees and with the mud having so strong a grip on the animal's legs. Now we two are the strongest, Liam and I," Drew told Blok, "so we will do the heavy lifting. Your task Johan is to rock the body side to side to work its legs free from the grip of the quicksand. When Liam and I sense that you have succeeded, we will lift the poor beast out of the trap."
"Are you guys sure you can lift so great a weight?" Klutz asked.
"Please!" Drew assured him. "All by myself I can lift two brontotheres into the air so one overgrown elephant should be no problem. With Liam's help, I won't even have to exert myself to do it. Let's make this happen."
"I'll be glad to let you take the lead, Drew. It is all I can do to lift a single brontothere."
"You're getting there Liam. At one time you could barely lift a pony."
Actually Drew was pretty sure he could lift three or four brontotheres at once, thanks to years of practice with the concentration and visualization techniques pioneered by Angus McFarden, whom Drew had dubbed King of the Iron Roads early on. Still there was no sense mentioning his power level unless it became tactically necessary. Liam had made plenty of progress himself with the same techniques.
Things went just as Drew had laid out. The pair lifted the elephant just enough to ease the pressure of its weight on the quicksand while Blok rocked it gently. All the while Dahl kept the stranded animal calm. It was intelligent enough to realize that the strange two-legged creatures were trying to help.
It took a while but eventually, with an assist from Jemsen's earth magic, the quicksand softened and loosened its grip and the two stronger fetchers lifted her onto firm ground, never letting her get higher than two feet so as not to alarm the animal. She chuffed a couple of times then slowly approached the four humans. Dahl assured the others of her peaceful intent. The trunk reached toward them drawing in the scent of the strange creatures who had helped her get free.
"She is memorizing our scent and appearance." Dahl explained.
Raising its trunk the grateful elephant trumpeted her thanks, which were echoed by the rest of the herd, even by the aggressive male whose charge Dahl had stopped.
The elephants then turned away and went back to what they had been doing before all the excitement began, namely feeding peaceably. The humans returned to the beach and talked things over.
"Such was our good deed for the day." Drew observed.
"Nay, it was our second good deed," Dahl told him. "Our first was halting their charge without hurting any of them."
"Amen," Drew agreed then added. "This episode will be yet another exciting adventure for my forthcoming book on our expedition."
"Don't you mean our book?" Karel teased. "After all, we twins do the illustrations, maps, and terrain sketches."
"For which you always get full credit, not just in the acknowledgements but on the title page as well."
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.