Elf-Boy's Friends 26
Forest Rangers
by George Gauthier
[The further adventures of characters from the novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends']
Chapter 1. Poaching
Forest ranger Sir Aodh of Llangollen and Elysion was not happy to get an order to return immediately to his ranger station. It came without an explanation from hiss friend and sometime lover the druid Dahlderon who had contacted Aodh by Mind Speech. Dahl said only that the reason for their recall would be explained when Aodh and his fellows rangers got back. So when the rangers did meet the druid at the manor house in Elysion, Aodh asked straight out:
"Dahl, why did you pull all six of us from our regular patrol duties? You must know that the orcs are still lurking beyond the hawthorn hedge which marks the boundary of the New Forest which they hate so much ."
Aodh's fellow rangers, Lord Madden Sexton, the elf-boy Dylan and Dylan's lover the half-elf Brandon, and the latter's two fully human cousins, the brothers Garret and Lorn, were all thinking the same thing and looked to the young druid for his answer.
Dahl started off with:
"I think you are being unfair to the orcs. They aren't looking for trouble any more. They are abiding by the peace treaty and threatening no one -- not any longer. They may not like having the New Forest for a neighbor, but they no longer see it as an infringement on their sovereignty and a block to their expansion. Their populace is marking time till their own expeditionary force and the armies of the Commonwealth conquer and liberate Amazonia from the genocidal trolls. Once that happens the bulk of the orcs will emigrate to their new lands leaving only a caretaker contingent in an enclave around their sacred peak. "
"How is that going anyway, Dahl, the invasion of Amazonia, I mean? Official reports and accounts in news-papers are disjointed. It is hard to see the big picture."
The others listened, eager for news. Dahl told them:
"I just got back from there myself. The orcs checked our invasion temporarily, though our forces are now pushing forward once again. What happened is this. The High Seas Fleet escorted an amphibious landing force to the coast and helped the army and naval infantry seize strategic ports and establish a solid lodgment area. Troll forces were forced back but then took up blocking positions on the roads and waterways leading inland. Still that was what we expected."
"One night, with our ships at anchor in two harbors thought to be safe from attack, the enemy floated great quantities of naphtha down the rivers and creeks emptying into the harbors then set the inflammable liquid on fire."
"Many ships were caught shorthanded with most of their hands ashore. The skeleton crews left aboard could neither get the ships underway nor put out the fires. Firecasters and water wizards eventually got the conflagration under control, but we still lost many ships, not just transports and cargo ships, but also fighting ships ranging from sloops and frigates to a couple of those big new carriers for naval flyers."
"The upshot was that the Army had to postpone the breakout for several weeks, but it has gotten underway again thanks to our space portals which allow us to leapfrog troll defensive lines and send whole regiments of Frost Giants to attack their entrenchments from the rear. Still the trolls are yielding ground only grudgingly."
"As to why the six of you are here, the reason is simply that we druids need you. We have a problem up north we want your team to sort out. Poachers have targeted our old friends the brontotheres, killing them then sawing off their horns and leaving the carcasses to rot."
"What use are horns taken from brontotheres?" Aodh asked.
Dahl shook his head.
"A sad tale of human folly. On the eastern continent of Karelia the horns are thought to have priapic properties when ground into a powder and taken with fortified wine."
"Our colleagues there have traced the foul trade in horns to its source, a strange land in the middle of the continent where an ancient and utterly useless pharmacopeia based on herbs, minerals, and ground up animal parts persists despite the proven efficacy of both natural medicine and magical healing. Having depleted the modest population of brontotheres in accessible regions of Karelia, the traffickers have turned to Valentia which has great numbers of the beasts."
Sexton shook his head in disgust."
"Ingesting horn to get horny is a particularly silly example of sympathetic magic. Only fools think that a bit of a brontothere's horn would restore their virility."
"What chance does common sense have in the face of the desperation borne of failing male potency?" Dahl countered.
"As you know," the druid continued, "brontotheres are intelligent enough that we protect them as a fellow sentient species. Though they lack the faculty of speech they can communicate with projected mental imagery, which is how I enlisted them in our service during the reconnaissance of the Barren Lands, now called South Varangia. The government of the Frost Giants made it illegal to hunt or capture brontotheres, making them crimes tantamount to murder and enslavement. The governing Council extended that to the entire Commonwealth."
"Remember the brontotheres and the New Forest are both part of the defenses of the Commonwealth against incursions of the ever restless eastern barbarians. As yet the forest is still too weak and the brontotheres too few to really play that role, but they will in time. We druids aim to make sure that happens."
"We know all that Dahl. You don't have to tell me about brontotheres. As you saw during our visit to my homeland years ago, my people are on friendly terms with our brontotheres. They are our totemic beasts."
"But how is this poaching any business of the forest rangers? Where the brontotheres roam is not part of the New Forest. It lies to the east, beyond the hawthorn hedge which marks the forest boundary. The brontotheres inhabit the transition zone between mountain, forest, and grassy plains, which suits a species which both browses and grazes. The range which the brontotheres roam up north is public land where hunting is prohibited entirely. Isn't this a job for the constabulary?"
"The constabulary does a good job in maintaining order, but they are not criminal investigators. You six are the best team we could field. Dylan is a trained and experienced interrogator, not to mention a champion archer and you are all expert trackers and doughty fighters. Your fellow forest rangers will cover your patrol areas while you six are away.
"Collectively you have the best record in the service counting arrests of malefactors and rescues of lost or injured hunters and travelers. Your greatest asset on this job will be Dylan who is a trained interrogator. His gift of empathy will let him know when a suspect is guilty."
"Actually, Lord Dahlderon," Dylan interjected, "an empathic gift does not tell you whether a suspect is guilty. Rather in investigations empathy detects deceit or falsehood. Sometimes innocent men confess to crimes they did not commit to protect a loved one, or for the notoriety a petty criminal might brag about a major crime to get a reputation."
"You make a good point Dylan. I also remember your saying that even keeping silent is no help since people react to questions they refuse to answer. It was your interrogation skills that let you fellows unmask the accomplices of the Vanishing Bandits a couple of years ago."
"So will you yourself be working on this problem as well?" Sexton asked.
"Yes, though I won't be with you rangers every step of the way. My initial task is to warn the brontotheres to be wary of strangers. Your job is investigation. Find out who is involved in the trade here in Valentia: the poachers themselves and the middlemen. Our colleagues in Karelia have a team of investigators tracing the illegal commerce in horns back from the wholesale buyers. The two investigations should dovetail in the middle."
"When it comes time to punish the malefactors we druids will not turn the malefactors over to the courts. Instead we druids will invoke our concurrent plenipotentiary legal authority and ourselves inflict an exemplary punishment which should make others think twice about killing brontotheres for their horns."
"I wouldn't want to be in their shoes with the druids mad at me."
Dahl nodded. "We do have a reputation for visiting condign punishment on those who cross us. Exile will be just the start of their ordeal."
"You won't kill them then?"
Dahl shook his head, a grim smile on his face. "No. They won't get off so easily. They will have twenty years to regret their crimes, confined to a deserted island in the outer ocean with only themselves for company: no jailers, no healers, and no provisions. They will have nothing to eat other than what they can nurture and grow, gather, or catch for themselves. And exile will be only half of their punishment. Their bodies will be wracked by recurring bouts of joint pain, itchy rashes, toothaches, earaches, and migraine headaches in a continual cycle of petty miseries that come and go. The occasional periods of remission and normalcy will only make the return of their miseries that much harder to bear."
"And if they repent their ways?"
The druid shrugged.
"What if they do? Can regrets undo the harm they did already?. No, we druids neither forgive nor forget those who provoke our just wrath."
Sexton shuddered at this coldness so uncharacteristic of the normally cheerful druid then asked:
"One more thing. Do we get to travel by space portal? All our friends got to step through portals during the short war with the orcs or when traveling to the tunnel in the Lightning War with the barbarians."
"Yes. We'll go through a portal and likely more than once, but don't expect much of a thrill except at the thought of covering hundreds of miles in an instant. It is a lot like stepping through any doorway except for the shimmer in the opening and a half second when you feel like you are falling. That is when our magic adjusts for the fact that half your body is in one location and half in another and also for the difference in rotational speeds at different latitudes. Otherwise you would be smashed by a landscape going by much faster or slower than you were at your point of departure."
Chapter 2. Searching for a Spoor
That night Aodh joined the elf-boy cum druid in his bedchamber in the eastern wing of the manor house. Aodh and Dahl had been lovers since before the young wir ever met Klarendes and the count indulged his spouse's continuing liaison with their mutual friend the druid. The nobleman knew that Aodh's relationship with the elf-boy in no way diminished their life bond. And there was no denying that the two made a lovely couple.
Standing five foot zero and weighing only a hundred pounds, Aodh was small, skinny, and smooth muscled. Impossibly pretty, he was a melding of the innocent and the wanton, the epitome of a boy in the full bloom of his youth with ivory skin like porcelain that never tanned or burned. Though he seemed utterly fragile and vulnerable, the epicene youth was actually three times as strong as he looked. Large green eyes dominated the stunning face of the androgynous youth which tapered from a wide brow down a pert nose to a narrow chin.
Adding to his fey look, the wir's eyes were shaped like almonds and slanted faintly upward above prominent cheekbones. His eyebrows bent in a angle rather than a round arch. From a wide unlined brow his face tapered to a small mouth with pouty lips just begging to be kissed and a sharp chin. Dark hair worn in a shaggy cut with bangs and tapering sideburns framed a face as cute as a kitten's.
The elf-boy was another walking wet dream. Preternaturally beautiful, lissome, and gracile and a vision of youthful male pulchritude were phrases that hardly did justice to the raven-haired elven beauty. With his delicate features, chiseled jawline, and killer cheekbones shielding lovely green eyes, his was the sort of youthful male beauty that turned heads and took your breath away.
The raven-haired elf-boy stood only an inch taller than the wir and weighed five pounds more. He had a surprising strong upper storey for one so slight of build and sported corrugated abs and a well-defined Adam's girdle. Thanks to druidical magic, the elf-boy was four times as strong than he seemed to be.
Physiologically Dahl and Aodh were still the youths they had been when they had met as genuine teenagers. Aodh was perpetually sweet sixteen Aodh while Dahl looked to be a stripling you whose age you would put at seventeen. Thanks to their magical natures, elves and wirs retained the strong sex drives of their teenage years during their entire lives.
Dahl lay down beside the wir, already halfway aroused by his proximity to his friend and lover. The moonlight streaming in through the open window bathed the wir's slender body with a pearly effulgence making him seem an ethereal being, rather than a flesh and blood boy. Only his breathing and the scent of the rose water Aodh had splashed on himself testified to his physicality.
Dahl reached out to caress Aodh's face, grazing the smooth cheek then stroking his pouty lips with his thumb. Eyes twinkling mischievously Aodh took half of Dahl's thumb into his mouth and sucked on it suggestively.
"Naughty boy!" Dahl scolded.
But Dahl was intent on a bit of naughtiness himself. He laid a first kiss on the young wir's lips then held his next kiss longer. He smiled then shifted his kisses to Aodh's nose and chin and cheeks before skipping down to the wir's tiny red nipples which he favored with both kisses and gentle nibbles. Aodh's nubbins stiffened.
Aodh giggled and ruffled Dahl's raven locks. Dahl's kisses trailed lower, down the mid-line of the chest to the navel and then to the corners of Aodh's narrow hips. A stirring of Aodh's manhood showed the kisses were having their intended effect.
Not surprisingly, one thing lead to another. With limbs interlocked their kisses and caresses grew more ardent, even frenzied. They rolled on their sides and turned top to tail and pleasured each other orally, hands roaming all over their rumps, touching, stroking, probing. Foreplay have given way to full arousal and then an explosive orgasm.
Their ecstatic cries were a paean to life and love, to the powers of generation, to the continuity of the flesh and the great chain of being, and, supremely, to the beauty of the sexual male. The climax was a catharsis for them both and a chance to forget their cares and the duties that would soon take them north into danger.
The next day the rangers and the elf-boy cum druid saddled their mounts and lead them through the space portal which Dahl opened for them in the forecourt of the manor. The horses shied at the shimmer in the opening. They definitely did not like the brief sensation of falling, which was why the riders lead their steeds instead of riding them.
Once safely through the gate they mounted and settled their weapons about them. Except for Aodh all of the rangers carried bows: Dylan, Brandon, Garret and Lorn, and even Sexton. For his distance weapon Sexton was usually content with throwing stars, but this time he had brought along a powerful recurved bow. Just like the one he had used in the defense of the mountain resort, this one was really a dismounted naval catapult minus the cocking mechanism. Only someone with the strength of a Frost Giant could draw it.
Aodh's tripled strength made his sling a match for the long bows the other rangers carried both in range and penetrating power. All six bore kukris in scabbards for close in work. Dahl brought his quarterstaff and a brace of ironwood throwing knives.
This was Aodh's first extended journey on horseback. In the past horses would not tolerate the touch of the wir black panther. No longer thanks to the changes in his physical constitution inspired by the New Forest.
Not too far ahead of them a herd of forty brontotheres browsed on tender shoots of the spring growth. The beasts watched their approach with interest but without fear. Humans and horses were familiar sights in their range which was the transition zone between the grassy plains to the east and the forest to the west, which allowed the beasts to both browse and graze.
Standing as tall at the shoulder as a Frost Giant brontotheres looked like armored one-horns or rhinos. Unlike rhinos, the two bony horns of the brontothere emerged from the forehead not the nose. They pointed forward and were set side by side. The brontotheres stood on legs like pillars which ended in flat pads to distribute their great weight. Their gray skin was thick and hung on their frames in folds, serving as living armor which might be pierced only by arrows driven by the most powerful of bows. All of which explained why they had no natural predators.
Bizarre in the extreme brontotheres were highly intelligent, nearly sentient in fact, and generally of placid temperament. But if they perceived a threat or they got angry, the charge of a herd of brontotheres was virtually unstoppable. It was not for nothing that they were called the juggernauts of the jungle.
"I am glad to see that our horses are unfazed by the presence of these gigantic beasts," Sexton observed. "That is quite different from the attitude of equines to olifants. Unless specially trained for it cavalry cannot face the gigantic beasts. Both their smell and their trumpeting cause horses to panic and run away. Years ago I relied on that fact to help win the final battle of my campaign in Sogdiana, whence my title of Conquering Lion of Sogdiana."
"That's got me thinking." Dylan said. "The brontotheres aren't the least bit wary of horses either. That suggests that the poachers did not ride up and attack them from horseback. Lord Dahlderon, you never did say just how the poachers killed their victims."
Dahl shook his head.
"Sadly they did it in the most heartless way you can imagine. The poachers offered the brontotheres cabbages and watermelons and sugar beet mash mixed with ground glass which they did not notice while eating the treats. During digestion the glass lacerated their stomach linings and made them bleed internally. They died hard: slowly and in agony. The poachers had only to wait for their victims to die and for the rest of the herd to abandon them after a short period of mourning, which I understand involves these social creatures sharing memories of the deceased via projected mental imagery.
"Could it have been an inside job?" Aodh asked the druid who told all of them:
"That is precisely what I want you to find out first. At the edge of the range the brontotheres roam across lies a farm contracted by the government to provide the brontotheres with vegetable treats like cabbages and beets. Every week the farmers take cartloads of fruits and vegetables to the brontotheres. That keeps the beasts from raiding farms outside the reservation, none of which are protected by ditches as in true brontothere country."
Sexton nodded. "Sounds like the right place to start our investigation."
"Not only that," the druid replied. We can use the farm as our initial base of operations. I'll commandeer some of the accommodations provided for visiting tourists. City folks vacationing at the dude ranches on the plains often stay over for a day or two to view, feed, walk with, sketch, and even ride the beasts who are quite friendly and tractable though not biddable as their riders cannot tell them where to go."
"But you can." Aodh pointed out. "As on your expedition to the Barren Lands."
"Yes, I can command animals, but with brontotheres I always ask rather than compel. I have a special bond with brontotheres."
"And once we settle in at the farm," Dylan added, "I'll invoke my empathic gift and informally sound out the staff about the poachers without revealing that we are investigating them as well as any strangers thereabouts."
The farmstead was laid out as an octagon a mile across though only part of it was currently under cultivation. It served a population of some two hundred brontotheres, with plenty of acreage for expanding the cultivated area as the beasts increased their numbers.
The octagon was surrounded by a ditch whose outer wall sloped gently up to the surrounding plains. The inner wall was vertical and made of fuzed earth. The barrier was the result of the joint efforts of an earth wizard and firecaster. It kept the brontotheres out, but the outward slope meant they could not hurt themselves falling into the ditch. Humans crossed the gap over footbridges too weak to support the great weight of a brontothere. A bascule bridge provided passage for wagons and coaches and riders.
The farmers were happy to put the rangers up during the investigation. The brontotheres were their friends too, and they had taken the losses personally. After and evening and a morning at the farm Dylan reported that he had detected no deception from any of the cadre at the farm. So no leads, but at least the rangers had eliminated the farmers as possible culprits or accomplices.
On the second day the party of investigators rose an hour after dawn then bathed and dressed before sitting down to a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, ham, sausage, hash brown potatoes, toast and jelly, and kaffay. They were still sipping from their mugs when a sergeant from the local constabulary station showed up to take them to the scene of the recent crimes.
The sites of all the the killings were about six miles from the farm, much farther out than the four points to which the farmers transported their produce for the brontotheres' weekly feedings. There were four such sites about a mile north, south, east, and west of the farm which wagons visited in rotation.
"What a sad sight it was to see such magnificent creatures laid low by so vile a tactic as ground glass in their food." Sergeant Craven said, shaking his head. "If you catch these foul poachers, save one for me."
Dahl nodded his understanding rather than his agreement to turn over a prisoner. He knew the good sergeant was just blowing off steam.
The bodies of the brontotheres had been left for nature to dispose of in her own unsentimental but necessary way. Still it was hard to look at a corpse of a brontothere after scavengers had been at work. Given their thick skins, only the eyes, ears, nostrils, and openings at the ends of the alimentary canal offered access to their bodies, so it was the smaller scavengers from insects up to the size of jackals who got the most meat, eating the beast from the inside out till the process of decay gave access for larger scavengers. It was not a pretty sight.
The rangers followed a spoor made by five individuals from the killing ground to a flat rocky area where the trail ended. No matter how they cast about they could not pick up the spoor again. The way the trail ended so abruptly baffled both the visual tracking skills of the rangers and the olfactory tracking skills of the wirs even in their animal forms of wolverine and black panther.
Sexton and Aodh resumed their human forms and climbed back into their clothes with the latter winking at the appreciative looks he got from the elven kind in their party: Dahl and Dylan who were the full elves and Brandon, who was half-elf.
"It's like the poachers vanished into thin air." Sexton observed, shaking his head.
"Just like at the other sites." Sergeant Craven added.
"Maybe that is exactly what did happen." Aodh answered. "Vanishing into thin air, I mean."
"How is that?"
"My guess is that the poachers are either fetchers themselves or men working with fetchers who can take to the skies just like the flyers in the Army Air Corps, lifting themselves and confederates by a wooden yoke. I'll bet this flat rocky spot was where they left their yokes and gear and approached the brontotheres on foot, with baskets of adulterated foodstuffs."
"If the poachers can fly, how can we capture them even if we find them?" Garret asked.
"Put arrows into them as they take to the air." Lorn answered his brother, still angry at what they had found at the killing ground.
Dahl shook his head.
"Dead men tell no tales. Better we track them by surveillance from birds then pounce on them through a portal and catch them on the ground. Here's how I think we should do it."
In a few sentences, Dahl outlined his plan. He himself would circulate among the brontotheres to warn them of the threat, keeping in touch with the rangers via Mind Speech at least once a day.
Now the brontotheres lived dispersed in half a dozen small herds so it would take several days for Dahl to get around to all of them. Communication was not a problem. Brontotheres did not have the power of speech, but they did communicate among themselves with projected mental imagery. Using his gift of telepathy which was usually referred to as Mind Speech Dahl would project imagery to caution the brontotheres to take food only at the familiar feeding points and only from the farmers they recognized.
Meanwhile, the rangers paired up into three teams: the brothers Garret and Lorn, the lovers Dylan and Brandon, and the wirs, Madden Sexton and Aodh. Their assignment was to ride the circuit of the ranches and farms in the region to ask about anyone who showed signs of new-found prosperity, especially fetchers. The brothers rode north, the lovers turned south, while the wirs headed east. No ranches were to the west where lay the hawthorn hedge and the New Forest.
Chapter 3. The Wrangler
Two distinctive peaks on the western horizon helped the rangers navigate the trackless grasslands. The terrain was monotonous, all rolling plains, and was virtually featureless except for occasional streams lined with gallery forests which provided welcome shade. Rainwater also collected in hollows in the land, natural watering holes for livestock.
It was at one such watering hole that they encountered a wrangler leading a remuda of a dozen or so ponies to the pond. A comely lad in his late teens he rode both bareback and bare ass on a pinto pony, utterly unselfconscious about his nudity for that was how one bathed ponies and horses the world over, the job of grooms and stable boys, young cavalrymen, or apprentice teamsters. The mounts didn't wear clothes to the bath, why should the boys?
Aodh was instantly smitten by the sexy youth. This wrangler was just his type: well below middle height so only a couple of inches taller than Aodh, his slender physique evidenced a considerable mixture of elven blood though he would have got his sandy hair and blue eyes from the human side of his heritage.
His remuda was a mix of pintos and roans and sorrels who nickered as they splashed their way into pond till the water reached their bellies. The nude wrangler had slid off his mount and went right to work scrubbing his charges with soap and brush. That was when he noticed the approach of the rangers.
"Good Morning, strangers." he called out, a cheery smile on his open and honest face. "What business takes you straight across country? Travelers in these parts usually keep to the roads so they won't get lost."
"We are forest rangers on official business." Sexton explained.
"Forest rangers? Then you must really be lost." He chuckled and pointed to the mountains. "The forest lies that-a-way."
Sexton smiled and asked: "My name is Madden Sexton and my friend here is named Aodh. Who might you be?"
"No might be about it." the boy replied shaking his head. "The name is Lukas Gwillam. I am the youngest of the five Gwillam brothers. This is our ranch. My pa Franklin Gwillam is up at the house if you need to talk to him."
"Fine, I'll ride up that way. Meanwhile Aodh, I saw how you caught his eye and vice versa, so why don't you give your own mount a good scrub and also lend the boy a hand with the rest of the horses, if that is all right with you, young Lukas."
"That's OK by me. I'll take all the help I can get."
As Sexton rode off, Lukas asked Aodh:
"So A, how come your name is just a single letter?"
"Actually it takes four letters to spell my name A-O-D-H, though it is pronounced like the first letter of the alphabet, or as, I usually say, like the vowels in `vein'".
"Sounds all the same to me, so I'll go with the first letter of the alphabet. If you are going to help me `A', you should get the tack off your mount and also slip out of that uniform and join me in the water."
With a big grin on his face Aodh dismounted, freed his horse of saddle and bridle, and took off his uniform and waded out to the wrangler. The wrangler watched his approach appreciatively, and why not? Small, skinny, smooth muscled and impossibly pretty, Aodh was a walking wet dream.
The personable wrangler was quite presentable himself which was why Aodh was looking forward to a brief casual affair with this young ranch hand. As far as he was concerned this mission counted as a walkabout. The rule among the wirs was that what happened on walkabout stayed on walkabout. That included extracurricular liaisons. Besides Aodh knew that his spouse Count Klarendes would not begrudge him a fling with the comely wrangler.
"Why are you so pale, A? Your skin is as white as ivory; it's like you never go out in the sun."
"Actually I am very much the outdoors type and off duty I go around in the rude nude practically all the time. I just don't show it the way you do, bronzed all over by habitual nudity. Like all my people I neither tan nor burn no matter how much exposure I get to the sun."
"Your people?"
"I come from a land far to the east, the land of the wirs."
"So you are a shapeshifter! Cool! What form can you take?"
"That of a black panther. I'd show you, but I don't want to frighten the ponies."
"Good thinking. Anyway I like you just the way you are now. In your human form you are just my type, an impossibly cute twink with a hard body, but let's save all that for later. Right now we need to get to work. Grab that spare brush hanging from the peg on the tree and help me scrub these ponies clean. Ourselves too afterwards."
The boys set to work with a will chatting all the while as they soaped and scrubbed and brushed the ponies including Aodh's own mount, finally setting them to graze. Then they scrubbed their own bodies squeaky clean.
Lukas allowed that since they were ahead of schedule, they had plenty of time for fun and frolic. With that he bent down, grabbed Aodh's ankles and yanked his legs out from under him, sending him backwards into the water with a splash. Aodh got his feet under him and surged out of the water, eyes blazing with mock fury as he grabbed Lukas in a wrestling hold, which was really just his excuse to get his hands on the young wrangler's hard body.
The boys grappled and splashed and wrestled and dunked each other, all accompanied by laughter, jokes, loud talk, and a good deal of grab ass horseplay. Kissing and petting soon gave way to all out sexual congress, an expression of unbridled teenage lust, as sexy kids sparked off a cute guy their own age, romping, stomping, and rocking, their surging hormones rising to an explosion of eroticism and spunk.
Lukas loved all the bodily contact and pressed himself against the smaller male. The press of their bodies made Aodh realize that Lukas' erection put his own more modest endowment in the shade. Its helmet looked to be about twice the size of his own and the stalk proportionally thick. Empurpled and engorged it throbbed with the wrangler's passion.
"I suppose that would be what they call a horse cock." Aodh asked.
"Nah, just a pony cock." Lukas answered breezily. "Now my four brothers, they all pack horse cocks, as I can tell you from direct experience taking them up my bum."
"That might be true, but I have all I can handle right here." Aodh said stroking his lover's rigid member. "Just take it slow, Lukas. I am small and tight back there."
Which was actually how Aodh preferred it, having a big one forced slowly into his tight quim, impaling him, filling him with his lover's masculinity. With his magically enhanced control of his musculature, Aodh could work his sphincters rhythmically, squeezing and massaging the invading member, employing muscles normally used to push out to draw in, helping a lover reach orgasm and afterwards milking his cock of the last drops of his gism.
Though natural bottoms, both boys occasionally liked to top, which did not happen that often in their love life. No one would take them for tops, being small and slender and pretty and totally lacking body hair even at the fork of their legs, not to mention their penchant for running around most of the time bare-ass naked. Yes nudity was a sensible adaptation to the tropical climate, but both Aodh and Lukas were shameless exhibitionists. They wanted other people to ogle their scrumptious bodies and to long for them.
Though smaller, Aodh's greater strength made him seem more believable as a top.
"I cannot believe how strong you are. Country boy that I am, and with all the hard work I do I just assumed I would overpower a pretty little thing like you."
"We wirs are twice as strong as we look, but I have taken it to another level thanks to my psychic link to the New Forest. With its guidance I found ways to strengthen and enhance my physique so that now I am easily three times as strong as you might expect."
"Who would have thought to find such strength in a diminutive boy toy like yourself, uh no offense, A."
"Why should I be offended? If being small and cute and sexy makes me a boy toy, so be it, though you should understand that I am not promiscuous by nature. Only a select few get to play with this particular toy, thank you, though I make exceptions when I am on walkabout while away from my spouse, Count Klarendes.
"The spouse of a nobleman! You are just full of surprises, aren't you?. Should I call you Lord A?"
The young wir shook his head.
"No. Count Klarendes is addressed as Lord. I am merely a knight though that is a rank conferred on me for service to the Commonwealth, not merely a courtesy title from my tie to the nobility. If you must be formal, you may address me as Sir Aodh."
"In that case, Sir A, you may address me as Sir L, which is a title conferred on me by the alphabet." the wrangler joked.
Aodh smiled. "Your fondness for jokes remind me of certain friends of mine, but never mind. Come here. Let's get physical again."
And they did. Get physical, that is.
Afterwards, they mounted their ponies and drove the remuda toward pastures within view of the ranch house where it was easier to keep an eye on them. Aodh did not bother putting the saddle and bridle back on his horse but simply held it in place in front of him across his mount's withers.
"No offense A, but you don't have a very good seat. You look uncomfortable atop your pony."
"You are right, Lukas. The fact is that I am not a natural rider. I started riding only a couple of years ago. Before then equines could not abide the touch of the feline in me, but I fixed that problem with the help of the New Forest. Still I almost never ride bareback like this but use stirrups, which keep me firmly in the saddle. I don't know how you can ride bareback all the time and not slip off."
Lukas shrugged.
"I have been riding this way all my life, bareback and bare-ass. Unlike my brothers I don't bother with a saddle since I am never mounted for any great length of time except when mounted by my brothers, if you take my meaning."
Shrugging the young wrangle explained:
"My brothers and I share a preference for same gender sex. They sometimes still frolic with each other, but these last two or three years I have played the bottom boy for all of them. I wouldn't have it any other way. It's our heritage. One look at us and you can see the the strong admixture of elven blood in our family."
"Lukas, you are a boy after my own heart. We male wirs don't care much for clothes either when in our usual human form. My uniform comes with the job, otherwise I go about skin-clad and barefoot."
Lukas nodded then said:
"Now in the stables and the corrals I wear clogs to keep my feet out of the muck, otherwise I am starkers. My brothers and I live much as full-blooded elves do, with all that implies including going skin-clad though my brothers do wear silk riding trews to prevent chaffing since they may spend all day in the saddle. I never do. I haven't worn a stitch since I was in swaddling clothes, and in fact I don't own a single garment. You can't get more naked than that!"
"You said you were a gardener as well?"
"Despite all our elven blood, I am the only one in the family gifted with a Green Thumb. I am more of a gardener than a farmer since I don't grown grain. We just buy our flour. I grow all our vegetables, tubers, and fruit. I take pride in my celery though its cultivation is tiresome. To blanch the stalks of celery you plant it in trenches then mound earth against the stems to block sunlight. So at the table my celery snaps clean and crunches they way celery should. It is not limp or stringy like celery you might find just anywhere."
"I also work in the stables where I repair or make the tack. I act as a general handyman around here. I'm handy with tools and can fix anything that is broken from a loose door hinge to the squeaky windmill which drives the water pump. I also make bricks and stack them for walls. We use adobe bricks as our primary building material since wood is scarce in the grasslands."
"My work is varied, but never boring even if I am just pushing a wheelbarrow or digging an irrigation ditch, or pruning trees in the orchard."
"I'd be bored just tending cattle so I am glad to leave that to my brothers. The four of them handle the herds, which is work which they consider more manly than anything I do. To them I am practically a farmer, a drudge who grubs in the earth to grow vegetables or an artisan cutting and sewing leather for tack."
"And they think that making and building with adobe bricks is mindless stoop labor, but it is more than that. I take pride in the fact that the walls I build stand straight and solid. In the past the walls my brothers tried to build leaned precariously when they didn't fall over entirely, which is why the work fell to me."
"My brothers can keep their old cattle. Unlike horses, cows are stupid creatures who are easily spooked."
"Horses get spooked too, you know." Aodh ventured. "There's nothing worse being carried away atop a runaway horse."
"That is so wrong, my friend, but entirely understandable since you are new to riding. Take it from someone who grew up on a cattle ranch, getting caught in a cattle stampede is far worse than being atop a horse with the bit in its teeth. Sure, horses can be startled and run away with their rider, but all you have to do is hang on till the horse tires or feels safe. The only danger is if he steps in a gopher hole, then it is bad luck for both of you. Horse and rider both might wind up with broken necks."
"There is nothing so dangerous as a cattle stampede. Almost anything can touch off a cattle stampede -- especially at night. Calling light, a lightning strike or thunderclap, an errant tumbleweed might get them running. The herd takes off in a panic, never mind who or what might be in its way. The gods help you if you are in their path. Unlike cows, even a runaway horse will try to avoid stepping on a man it sees in his path."
"I yield to your expertise, Sir L." Aodh conceded.
And so bareback as well as bare ass the boys rode up to the ranch house. One look at the two of them and it was obvious what they had been up to.
Chapter 4. The Family Gwillam
Madden Sexton introduced Aodh to the rancher Franklin Gwillam and his four oldest sons, all born a year apart. The oldest was Thrwan who was twenty-one. All of them wore silk riding trews and leather boots. All except the father were bare to the waist. The father was bare headed while the sons wore straw hats against the sun. Unlike Lukas, the rest of the family were tall though with the characteristic slenderness of elves.
The senior Gwillam nodded at his youngest son and said:
"Lukas, no doubt you will want to share your quarters with your new friend while the rangers are staying with us. Ranger Sexton can have the guest room to himself."
Lukas' brothers smiled and winked and gave him a thumbs up. Thrawn remarked: "You've caught yourself a live one there, kiddo. The little guy is as cute as a kitten."
"A kitten. Yes, that brings up something I need to mention in all candor." Sexton began. "Some folks don't much like shape shifters, which both of us are."
"Not a problem in this household, Ranger Sexton, but out of curiosity, what forms do you two take on?"
"Aodh transforms into a sleek black panther, which is why your son's description of him as cute as a kitten was so apt. As for me, I turn into a wolverine."
The rancher whistled. "They're tough customers, wolverines, as I have heard."
"Could you show us?" Lukas asked. "Where we are standing now the horses and cattle can't see you and take fright."
Sexton shrugged out of his clothes and transformed. Now in his human form Madden Sexton was a ruggedly handsome human looking to be no more than thirty and with a solid physique like Finn Ragnarson's only scaled down to six feet. His powerful build and two hundred fifty pounds of muscle and bone and sinew made him a tough customer even in his human form.
As for his animal form, a wolverine is a stocky muscular carnivore with short legs, a broad and rounded head, small eyes and short rounded ears all of which made it resemble a bear more than its relatives in the weasel family. Armed with powerful jaws, sharp claws, and a thick hide the wolverine was a solitary hunter with a reputation for ferocity and strength all out of proportion to its size, capable of killing prey many times larger than itself such as deer and even moose. Only instead of a body of fifty pounds, this particular wolverine massed five times as much.
"Whoa!" the others exclaimed.
Aodh was already naked, so without more ado his form blurred, the young shape shifter's innate magic taking only seconds to transform the pretty boy-toy into a sleek black panther. Aodh ran around for a bit then reared up on his hind legs and slashed the air with his claws, snarling to look fierce. Then he morphed back into his human form. He didn't bother getting dressed, preferring to remain nude like his new boyfriend Lukas who always went about skin-clad himself.
Lukas was mightily impressed.
"Wow! I had no idea you could transform so fast, Aodh, or that the change was like you were melting from human to cat and back again. And that was quite a horizontal leap you made a moment ago."
"Indeed, Lukas. The legs of a panther are proportionally the longest of the big cats. Even your normal tawny panther can jump say forty feet (12 m) horizontally and nearly half that vertically. With my magically enhanced strength I can do much better than that."
"Both of us are about three time stronger than you might expect from our size." Madden explained. "Which makes me as strong as a Frost Giant and Aodh stronger than a human my own size."
That drew another wow from Lukas.
"No wonder he was so strong when we grappled and wrestled and, er... that is..."
"Had fun?" Thrawn suggested.
Lukas grinned sheepishly.
"My Lukas fancies other boys, just as his brothers fancy him." the rancher explained.
"No doubt the admixture of elven blood in your family explains the same gender orientation of your sons." Sexton observed.
"Ranger Sexton your fellow shape shifter is about the most scrumptious thing I have ever laid eyes on. Not that my own tastes run that way, you understand. I consort exclusively with the female half of the species."
"He means our ma" Thrawn confided. "Except she herself might not describe their relationship as entirely exclusive!" he added with a mischievous grin.
"Such impertinence! Young man, you are not yet too old to bend over my knee for a spanking!" his father warned with feigned menace then explained to his visitor:
"Everyone knows that what happens at the end of a cattle drives stays there. You don't bring it home -- or bring it up at home either," he added pointedly.
"Nor should I have just now." Thrawn intoned, head hung low, the obviously contrived expression of contrition on his face belied by the merriment dancing in his eyes.
Sexton grinned. This was a likable family with an easy relationship between the father and his sons.
As they went inside Franklin Gwillam introduced his wife Megan. Her looks proclaimed the preponderance of human blood in her heritage, just the opposite of his husband who was more elf than human.
Franklin Gwillam told her that their visitors who would be staying over for the next several days. She shrugged, used to putting out extra plates on the dinner table for unexpected visitors. Ranch folk tend to be hospitable, always willing to put up traveler and hear the latest news. News-papers didn't circulate much outside the larger towns.
"I suppose I should climb back into my uniform." Aodh offered
"Suit yourself, but I happen to know that wirs have as little use for clothing as my youngest son who runs around in the nude all the time and even sits at the table that way."
"And staying skin clad will let all of us ogle you shamelessly." Thrawn added.
"Hey, I'm not sharing him!" Lukas complained.
"We just want a good look at your new boyfriend, Lukas." Thrawn soothed. "You two sure make a cute couple."
At dinner the matriarch served a tasty beef chili that had been bubbling in the pot over the charcoal-fired iron stove in the kitchen. Corn on the cob, fresh bread made that morning, a tangy bean salad, and soft cider rounded out the menu. Dessert was blueberry pie.
"We eat as well as we do thanks to Lukas's garden and orchard which provides us with a wide variety of foodstuffs. Sad to say the diets in most households around here are monotonous and unimaginative."
Sexton nodded and said. "Speaking as a world traveler, I can tell you that this was one of the tastiest home-cooked meals I have ever eaten."
"My Megan is a treasure." Franklin Gwillam said, smiling at his wife.
"Oh bosh." she said though she clearly appreciated the compliments.
"The real treasure in this household is our five sons. All save Lukas will eventually marry and carry on the line but with their extended youth and life span that can afford to wait a decade or two. I think it is better that way, for sons anyway. It gives young men a chance to see something of the world, to sample what life has to offer, and enough time to acquire the stake each will need to strike out on his own."
"And as a mother, it gives me a chance to live with my sons as adults before some pretty young thing catches their fancy and snatches them away from me." Megan Gwillam added.
That evening, they all watched as the sun set behind the mountains to the west, painting the sky in broad brushes with orange, and red, and purple. With everyone feeling mellow after a couple of rounds of peach schnapps the rangers shared a little more information about their mission and asked the new friends whether they could shed any light on the recent poaching.
"I take it then, Ranger Sexton that you do not consider me and my family to be suspects."
"No. After three centuries of life experience I dare say that I am a good judge of character. You and your sons just are not the sort to kill brontotheres slowly and painfully using ground glass to cut their guts open from the inside."
Franklin Gwillam shook his head in disgust.
"Horrible! We would never do anything harm to brontotheres, but I cannot but wonder if that technique should not be the punishment for the miscreants. Force ground glass into their stomachs and see how they like it."
Sexton shook his head and explained that dolorous exile was the punishment the druids had reserved for the poachers.
"Aye. That would be a just punishment for their crimes. I am afraid I let my detestation of their methods override my moral sense just now."
"Lukas told me that he was gifted with a Green Thumb. What of the rest of you Gwillams?" Aodh asked.
"All Gwillam males have the gift of Unerring Direction, which is a big help in managing herds on the trackless plains. In addition we each have second gifts like electrum sparks, lightning bolts, or Calling Light. Thrown's globes of light persist so we light the house with them in the evening. Our powers are modest but still useful to defend against predators like the occasional tawny panther or dire wolf on the prowl for an easy meal."
"A lightning bolt or an electric globe around his head will kill any predator. Sparks alone might not kill a panther or a wolf but they could blind it or distract it long enough to put an arrow into it off just chase it away. You see we don't carry our weapons at the ready. So it takes a moment to string the bows we carry in scabbards on our mounts. As for enemies, we don't get raided any more by the eastern barbarians. They have finally learned not to mess with the Commonwealth."
"Are there any fetchers among your neighbors?"
"Not any more, not since a recruitment drive swept up local youths with that gift. They joined the Army to fight trolls in Amazonia. Is that significant?"
Sexton explained that the poachers were either fetchers themselves or were working with men who took to the air to avoid leaving a spoor.
The next few nights Aodh slept with Lukas in his room at the end of the house farthest removed from his parents. In between were the two rooms where his four brothers slept, two to a room. Room of his own or not, Lukas never had privacy since his brothers slept with him in rotation, sometimes two at once. That was why his room was furnished with a sturdy marital bed not just the cots his brothers had in their own rooms.
Thanks to the solid adobe walls, the sounds of lusty sexual congress did not carry from Lukas' room to his folks at the other end of the house thought the brothers were close enough to get an earful. At first the four brothers just listened to the goings on in the next room, but after two days they asked if they could watch.
Lukas shrugged. Why not? An exhibitionist from puberty, Lukas was long past shame or prudishness about his nudity or his role as the sex toy for his older brothers. His sibling often watched each other pumping away at his butt or sliding down his throat, not only in his room at night but during the day whenever they found the boy between chores and took him right out in the open in broad daylight with Lukas down on hands and knees in the top soil of his garden or laid belly down over a fence rail, his delectable rump offered for whatever use randy males would make of it with maybe a second brother on the other side of the fence presenting himself for oral service.
Lukas wasn't being forced, just responding to entirely natural urges, much as with the couplings of the livestock, as when a stallion covered a mare or a bull mounted a cow. The difference was that couplings between males could never engender new life, no matter how often his brothers used Lukas to slake their lusts.
Aodh demurred, not at all caring for an audience. Lukas might be his brothers' boy toy but he Aodh was not. The four graciously conceded Aodh exclusive sexual access to Lukas. During his stay the four older brothers did not insist on their privileges with their younger brother.
Chapter 5. Harben
With the ranch as their base, the rangers rode to nearby ranches and farms and questioned the locals. Based on what they told him Sexton thought a visit to the nearby town of Harben might be in order. After saying goodbye to the Gwillam family the two rangers set out across the plains.
As the county seat, Harben was larger than most rural towns. Its main buildings were laid out around a leafy square not just strung along the main road. On the square stood the post office cum heliograph station, a modest courthouse and jail, the school, a medical dispensary, the cattleman's association, and two sanctuaries dedicated to different pantheons.
On side streets just off the square stood three general stores which competed for the custom of the ranchers and farmers and townsmen. Four taverns offered food and drink, entertainment, and rooms for travelers as well as the services of compliant lasses and lads. Also there was the usual collection of service businesses like the livery stable and blacksmith, lumber and carpentry shop, barber, etc.
Sexton had learned that a survey team was at work in the area, scoping out the route for an iron road running from the northern end of the plains south to Dalnot, where it would connect to a line already under construction which would run westward through the mountains to the city of Bled in the Commonwealth proper to join the growing transport network. Not only would the iron road ship grain from the Eastern Plains to the populous heartland, refrigerated freight cars would carry chilled beef carcasses from slaughter houses located along the route.
The route of the iron road ran some little distance west of and parallel to the unpaved roads which linked the towns on the Eastern Plains from north to south. That way the road bed would cross streams while they were still narrow freshets carrying the runoff from the mountains. Farther east, the land was flatter and the streams joined into wide, slow-moving braided rivers which would be more expensive to bridge. Also their roadbeds would have to be supported by piers in the riverbed which made them vulnerable to scouring and undermining during floods.
The business plan sounded plausible enough, but it could be just a ruse, a clever cover story for a party of poachers to roam the countryside without exciting suspicion. Harben might well be the transshipment point for brontothere horns smuggled out in freight wagons.
The survey for the new iron road operated out of offices at an old lumber yard. Where stacks of lumber once stood was a corral for horses and a shed for the light wagons commonly used on the plains by ranchers and farmers.
Lightweight enough to be drawn by a single horse the wagon was steered by its two front wheels which are connected by an axle with a pivot in the middle. The front and rear axles supported a simple unsprung platform of roughly finished boards which carried the load. That made for a rough ride though the twin seat up front was on springs. [In other words a buckboard.]
Sexton introduced himself and Aodh to a man working at a set of maps spread over a trestle table. A big sandy-haired man with rough hands which showed he was no mere office clerk, he said he was the chief of the survey for the iron road. His name was Josef Kramner and he described himself as a native of Grayling, the town at the head of navigation on the Long River and headquarters for the firm of Angus McFarden, King of the Iron Roads, whose firm was contracted to build the transport line.
Kramner seemed cooperative enough, explaining how the survey operated. Yes, they did have fetchers on staff who made aerial surveys of the possible routes for the iron road. Official maps were not detailed enough to finalize a route.
At the mention of fetchers the two rangers nodded to each other. Meanwhile Kramner added:
"The survey also employs a pair of delvers."
"Why delvers?" Aodh asked.
"The fetchers check the lay of the land, but the delvers tell us what lies beneath. That way we won't route the road over an underground stream or worse, the roof of a cavern liable to collapse and form a sinkhole. In some sectors the plains are underlain by limestone, you see. I'm surprised the dwarves haven't claimed the caverns as their own and moved in."
Aodh shook his head.
"Until the Commonwealth defeated the eastern barbarians and broke up their confederation, they would have not been safe. It is mostly humans out here on the plains now, though the dwarves would be welcome to settle here as well. If they haven't done so yet it is because they are a long-lived race with a slow population growth and plenty of room in the caverns they currently occupy."
Kramner told the rangers that the survey was also prospecting for rock oil which could be refined into a fuel for oil lamps. Not every home or business had someone who could Call Light. Shipments of rock oil to refineries might become a third cargo for the iron road after grain and chilled meat. There would also be passenger service and supplies for army garrisons and the towns along the route.
Pointing to a map on the wall, he said that Harben would become the northern hub of the iron road, with less sturdily built feeder lines radiating out in all directions. That was why the survey had been operating from Harben for some weeks now. Eventually the survey would shift operations southward though always maintaining premises in Harben, the northern terminus of the planned iron road.
Just as he finished his explanation one of their wagons drove up.
"Here comes one of our fetchers now." Kramner remarked.
The man who walked into the office had a weathered look about him and was covered with dust. He was surprised when Kramner introduced him to two forest rangers.
"Forest rangers? Aren't you guys out of your territory?" he asked. "The forest is about twenty miles that-a-way." he added, pointing west.
"So we have been told," Sexton replied dryly. "But our authority as peace officers extends over the plains as well. Besides we are working for the druids who have global legal authority. As to why we we showed up in Harben, an investigation brought us here."
That news put the man on the defensive. He suddenly turned wary and soon found an excuse to go back out. To attend to his team, he explained.
"He should have done that before he came in." Kramner observed. "Some of this new crew I have hired seems preoccupied, as if they had a purpose of their own, and for some reason they have an inordinate fondness for watermelon."
"Then you have not worked with them before?"
"Not all of them. Half are permanent party and half recent hires who responded to recruitment notices we published in various news-papers when it became clear that besides our surveyors we would need fetchers and delvers and not just locally hired roustabouts. We had to pay premium salaries too. There aren't many fletchers left out this way, thanks to the Army."
After the rangers left the survey offices, they talked about what they had learned.
"Kramner seems honest enough, but not that fetcher of his, this Wrangel fellow." Sexton said. "I may not be an empath like Dylan, but I can often tell when a man is lying to me. He either flushes, which makes his face warmer, or blanches, which makes it cooler. Thanks to the enhancements conferred by the New Forest I can see the temperature change."
Aodh nodded. "I cannot see heat or detect changes in body temperature as you can, but my hearing in acute enough to detect the low frequency undertones in a man's voice that usually signify deception. And we both smelled the onset of fear when he learned that the druids were involved."
Sexton nodded. "In recent years the druids have exercised their powers more publicly. In the past there were only seven druids on Valentia who mostly dealt with ecological problems and worked out of public view from their remote stronghold in the Great Southern Forest or in the wilderness."
"Nowadays there are a score of druids including three stationed in the Commonwealth itself at Elysion. Recent events like the birth of the New Forest, the fertility plague unleashed on the trolls in their homeland, that death duel between Dahl and the rogue war wizard, and the use of space portals in warfare against the eastern barbarians and the trolls have served to remind everyone that the druids are the most powerful magic wielders on the planet."
The rangers agreed that they should wait for Dahl to contact them with Mind Speech, as he did every evening, and tell him to collect Dylan and the others and bring them to Harben to pursue the investigation together.
While the pair was waiting for the rest of their team, Aodh reprised his old role as a wandering minstrel and put on two shows an evening which drew a good crowd. Dressed only in a green sarong slung low around his hips, Aodh was a veritable vision of youthful male pulchritude. Even patrons who did not fancy pretty boys appreciated his musical talent as he sang rousing ballads and bawdy drinking songs while accompanying himself on a borrowed ukulele.
With their enhanced hearing, both shape shifters could eavesdrop on the talk going around them, sorting out one conversation from another while listening for anything about the iron road and its workers. It was a tactic to collect intelligence without putting anyone on the defensive from being questioned by law enforcement officers.
On the evening of the third day after the meeting in Harben the two rangers were reunited with their colleagues: Dahl, the elven lovers Dylan and Brandon and the latter's cousins Garret and Lorn. Sexton and Aodh reported what they had learned including what they had picked up from bar talk in the local watering holes during and after Aodh's performances.
Dahl's plan was to catch the poachers in the act. He would watch this Wrangel through the eyes of a hawk while the others trailed him from a distance. When the time was right, Dahl would contact the rangers via Mind Speech to join him in making the arrests. Then it would be the Dylan's job to interrogate the culprits.
The next day the rangers followed Wrangel out of town while Dahl watched from aloft. Meeting up with confederates he targeted a half dozen brontotheres for slaughter. This time things did not go well for the poachers.
Dahl watched as the brontotheres refused the poachers' proffered treats, having been put on the alert by the young druid's warnings. Instead of placidly chewing the cabbages and watermelons laced with ground glass, the brontotheres recognized the poachers as the enemies they had been warned about. Roaring their challenge they charged the poachers. The two fetchers among the poachers took to the air and got away, but their earthbound colleagues suffered the fate of those who messed with brontotheres: a messy but mercifully quick death.
Badly shaken by the hideous fate of their comrades, Wrangel and his fellow fetcher set down a couple of miles away to think about what they should do next. The initiative was taken out of their hands when Dahl and the rangers stepped through a shimmering portal.
Wrangel shook his head at the druid's demand to surrender.
"No way we are going to surrender," he sneered, "not to a bunch of pretty boys dressed up in ranger uniform. That was a neat trick with the portal, elf-boy, but I'll bet none of you can fly, but both of us are fetchers and take to the air thanks to these yokes the Army invented. No reason though we shouldn't kill you first so you cannot raise the hue and the cry against us."
But it was Sexton who acted first. Drawing his powerful recurved bow, really a dismounted naval catapult minus the cocking mechanism, he sent a war arrow at the fetcher who simply snorted as the shaft slowed to a halt just in front of him. Plucking it out of the air, Wrangel snapped it in two and threw it contemptuously on the ground.
"Now we could set our steel spheres whirling and smash your skulls, but that would be too quick a death. No, as revenge for our friends we are going to make you all suffer. For starters we'll yank the eyeballs out of your head. Once we have you helpless, we'll strip the clothes off you and haul you off the ground by your balls. Then a strong yank will turn you into eunuchs for the short while you have to live till you bleed to death. You're first, elf-boy. Your green cloak means you would be the druid. Right?"
"Yes, I am a druid."
The fetcher gestured, invoking his telekinetic power to yank Dahl's eyeballs out of his head. Only nothing happened except that the jewel which the druid wore at his neck glowed briefly. Bewildered by the failure of his magic Wrangel stared stupidly at the druid. The other fetcher was equally unsuccessful at directing his powers at the druid.
Dahl nodded to Aodh, the signal for him to ground the fetchers by incapacitating them.
The young wir cut loose with his stand-off weapon, an intolerable screech 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, making it easy to close with and kill enemies as they staggered about with their hands over their ears. The screech was highly directional, strong in a conical zone in front but negligible to the sides or behind.
As the poachers writhed on the ground Garret and Lorn clapped irons on their limbs. Then the whole group stepped through the portal which had been realigned to exit in a cell in a prison in Dalnot. Behind bars, chained to the wall, and deprived of their flying yokes and their clothes and weapons, the fetchers were well and truly caught.
It wasn't long before they were persuaded to talk, the truth of their tale confirmed by Dylan's empathic sense which let the young elf know whether his interlocutor was sincere. Sexton was relieved that the fetchers cleared Josef Kramner of any part in their scheme. In short order the constabulary had all the information needed to round up the rest of the ring of poachers and their middlemen.
The fetchers had been so cooperative because the druid promised that they would not be punished for attempted murder but only for poaching. Their sentence would be exile on a deserted oceanic island with only themselves for company: no jailers, no healers, and no provisions only the tools they would need to survive. They would have to grow, gather, or catch their own food. And exile was only half of their punishment. Their bodies would be wracked by periods of joint pain, itchy rashes, toothaches, earaches, and migraine headaches in a continual cycle of petty miseries.
For giving evidence the two fetchers got a reduced sentence of only fifteen years while their confederates were sentenced to twenty, though that was kept quiet to prevent retaliation by their partners in crime.
Afterwards the druid and the rangers stepped through yet another portal to the capital where they met with the elf-boy's friends: the twins Jemsen and Karel, Drew Altair and Corwin Klarendes, Axel Wilde and Karl-Eike Thyssen. Young Corwin Klarendes wrote up their story and got a scoop for the Capital Intelligencer.
"So why did their magic fail them?" Drew Altair asked. "The fetchers should have been able to yank out your eyeballs right out of your head."
"True, but I was wearing an ensorcelled amulet just like Axel's which nullifies any magic wielded against the wearer. Before they could turn their powers on the others or try to flee, Aodh incapacitated them with his sonic weapon."
"Where did you get such an amulet?" Axel asked. "I understood from Sir Willet that they were rare."
"It is the very same amulet borne by that evil wizard who lead a raid on Elysion more than a decade ago, a thrust aimed at killing Balandur before he could lead a covert operation against the center of power of the dark empire of the life leech Urloch. You will remember how cleverly Arik killed the wizard by letting a boulder fall on his head. He had raised it by his magic but then let go. Gravity did the rest. Count Klarendes retrieved the amulet and turned it over to us druids as those best able to make use of it."
"I only just got it back from Chief Druid Bjornn on Karelia to whom we lent it for several years while the druids there replenished their diminished numbers following a natural disaster which practically wiped them out."
"Now if only you druids could figure out how to make others." Axel said. "After all, you did rediscover the technique for creating portals. Why not amulets too?"
Dahl nodded. "We are working on it, Axel, believe me, and not just to learn how to create new amulets but also how to counter their magic. Remember I myself once had to face a foe protected by an ensorcelled amulet."
"Oh? What happened?" Sexton asked. "I take it you defeated him."
"Yes, while he was gloating about how his amulet protected him from magic I hurled a throwing knife made of ironwood into his skull. The miscreant dropped like a marionette with its strings cut. An ensorcelled amulet gives no protection against purely physically attack."
"Anyway, now that we have captured the criminals, I have told the brontotheres via projected imagery that they are no longer in danger." Dahl related with satisfaction. "They are very grateful to the humans and elves who protected them, and their matriarch Manda knows of your part in particular Aodh."
The wir nodded.
"Manda and I are old friends. As a boy I would clamber aboard and let her take me where she would. As you know, the people in my original homeland regard the brontotheres as our friends and totemic beasts. We get on famously with them. I am so glad I enlisted in the forest rangers and so was in a position to protect the brontotheres."
"So what happens next?" Eike asked.
"We will return via a portal to Elysion and the New Forest." Dahl replied. "But that won't be for a few days. Creating so many portals one after another has worn me out. Anyway we have all earned some time off. The good news is that Aodh and Eborn have graciously made Count Klarendes' town house here in the capital available to us."
"Outstanding!" Dylan exclaimed.
"And this will us twins a chance to show you and Brandon around Twinkle Town." Karel told him.
"Twinkle Town?"
Karel smiled and explained:
"Named for the cute twinks who are its most notable denizens, and of whom all of us except Madden Sexton are prime exemplars, Twinkle Town is a district or rather a cluster of dining, drinking, and dancing establishments favored by males who fancy pretty boys and by pretty boys who favor being fancied."
"It's fabulous!" Jemsen assured them.
"Lead on!"
Author's Note
This story is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead.
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This story is one of an occasional series about the further adventures of the characters introduced in the fantasy novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends' and published by Nifty Archive. The chief protagonist of the novel, Dahlderon, elf-boy and druid, appears in these stories in a supporting rather than starring role. Each story in the sequence stands on its own, with the focus on one or a few of the original characters.
Readers who like these stories might want to try my two series 'Daphne Boy' and 'Naked Prey' in the Gay/Historical section of the Archive. My 'Jungle Boy' series of Hollywood tales is posted in the Gay/Authoritarian section. The recent series 'Andrew Jackson High' relates the trials and tribulations of five of its gay students. For links to these and other stories, look on the list of Prolific Authors on the Archive.