Elf Boy's Friends

Elf-Boy's Friends 29

Amazons

by George Gauthier

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

Chapter 1. Council of War

The druids had kept in contact with General Urqaart via Mind Speech and apprised him of the progress of their preliminary campaign on the upper Amazon River. Urqaart's next offensive would kick off as soon as he got word that the trolls were locked in combat with the Amazons.

Urqaart intended to inflict a crushing defeat on the trolls. Most of his infantry was now equipped with the latest model of airgun and was by now well-trained in how to clean, maintain, and shoot it. The weapon fired sixteen small lead bullets farther than a crossbow could propel a quarrel. That was a real game changer. Volley fire from airguns would scythe the trolls down like wheat at harvest time, making the time honored tactic of the mass infantry charge obsolete. Against airguns, a charge over open ground amounted to mass suicide. Afterwards the Commonwealth's earth wizards would have to invoke their magic to bury the windrows of corpses.

Now horses covered ground faster than foes on foot and might close with Commonwealth infantry in less time. So for protection against cavalry charges, the airgun came equipped with a spike bayonet.

Fifteen inches long the bayonet was held in place by lug, a metal catch on the underside of the barrel, which locked the weapon in place while keeping the muzzle clear for normal shooting. As a last resort with ammunition exhausted, the bayonet might also fend off enemy infantry during close combat. The airgun and bayonet offered greater reach than the long-handled axes the trolls favored.

Commonwealth infantry armed with airguns could not carry shields and was thereby vulnerable to missile attack, but these days fetchers held a missile shield over the front lines, deflecting arrows, quarrels or slung lead bullets and stones but allowing outgoing missiles from airguns, longbows, crossbows, or slings.

Infantry drawn from the the ranks of humans and elves carried the standard infantry version with its long barrel, but dwarven infantry used the short barreled carbine version originally intended for cavalry. Though dwarves still carried their traditional mauls they had given up their shields relying on fetchers to shield them from arrows. For close in fighting they used the spike bayonets. Their thrusts, slashes, and parries were delivered by muscles, bones, tendons, and ligaments originally designed for heavy gravity planets. Dwarves might be smaller than trolls, but they were nearly as strong.

Urqaart hoped that two more major defeats plus the certainty that retreat beyond the reach of the Commonwealth was now cut off, would make the trolls sue for peace.

That peace would have to entail their complete withdrawal from the continent of Valentia and the repatriation of all trolls back to their oceanic archipelago. Anything less would just be setting the stage for another war. The Commonwealth of the Long River was not interested in fighting a series of wars against the trolls. Its war aim was not just a victory but a permanent end to the threat.

"So far so good," Klarendes told his colleagues, "but in our own campaign the open country beyond the swamps works to the advantage of the trolls whose army is so much larger than that of the Amazons. We have to find a way to turn that around, to make the wide open spaces an advantage for our side."

The vast region was excellent cavalry country, a undulating tropical lowland covered by brush and grasslands where the low spots flooded up to three feet during the rainy season turning the savannas and woodlands into temporary wetlands with islands of slightly higher ground. That is what made the area unsuited to agriculture and why it did not have a settled population. But this was the dry season.

"I don't suppose Urqaart could be persuaded to send us a dozen regiments of heavy cavalry via a portal." Klarendes mused.

The heavy cavalry of the Commonwealth of the Long River was unmatched on the continent. To support its three battalions of lancers each regiment had a fourth battalion of horse archers or carabineers, that is riders armed with the carbine version of the air gun. Instead of a bayonet their blade was the traditional saber though now sheathed in a scabbard worn on the back rather than at the hip. That made it easier for the cavalry to dismount and fight as dragoons, without having to worry that the scabbard might trip them up.

"Actually I know where we might get heavy cavalry of a sort with emphasis on heavy." Dahl said.

"You're thinking of brontotheres, aren't you, Klarendes asked.

"I am."

"Brontotheres are Dahl's totemic beast" Owain reminded them.

"And mine as well." Aodh said then described how the people from whom he had originally sprung dwelt in harmony with brontotheres in their hidden homeland. "The great beasts are placid and friendly toward us and protect us from predators. Many is the time brontotheres stood between a lost child and a slavering tiger."

"They even tolerate the children climbing onto them for a ride though they are not biddable, going where they will. Many youngsters bond with particular animals. I did myself with one I named Manda."

"Much as we like brontotheres we have to keep them away from our crops with a system of ditches and canals they cannot cross. The inner walls are vertical, but the outer walls have an easy slope lest the brontotheres fall in and hurt themselves. And though they cannot get to our fields, we often supply them with treats like cabbages and sugar beets for which they are grateful."

"I saw that system for myself" Dahl picked up, "when I traveled with Aodh to the land of the wirs. It was Aodh's people who inspired my recommendation for your people Seerah to adopt that system of ditches and canals in your own country."

"Which we have, with excellent results." she noted.

"Years later," Axel continued "the Commonwealth established a wildlife reserve for brontotheres on the Eastern Plains to shield us from intrusions of the barbarians. The preserve lies at the foot of the Eastern Mountains hence it is in the transition zone between forest and grassy plain. So the brontotheres also protect the livestock of the farmers and ranchers on the open grasslands from predators who would otherwise range outward from their mountain haunts and hunt them."

"Now many herbivores will form a defensive circle when threatened. Brontotheres do so as well to protect their young, but they also go on the offensive and send a force of bulls and females to attack and repel the threat. Both sexes are armed with two forward pointing horns. They also use their bulk as a weapon to bowl foes over, to trample them. They will even rear up and smash a downed foe with the weight of their forequarters."

Sir Willet nodded. "Natural philosophers think brontotheres were deliberately installed on Haven as a biological control species to prepare the planet for settlement by the humanoid races: humans, elves, giants, and dwarves. Their job was to check and ultimately to wipe out a variety of bipedal reptilian predators called raptors. Covered with feathers like birds they were armed with a frightful dentition and sickle shaped claws. Now the largest had only twice the mass of a human or elf, but they hunted in packs which could take down much more formable prey by swarming tactics."

"Most herbivores accept the facts of pack predation and the loss of weaker or just unlucky individuals to attack by wolves, hyenas, big cats and the other apex predators who filled the niche that the extermination of the raptors created. Brontotheres however are absolutely intolerant of predation. If a predatory pack swarms a brontothere calf, adult brontotheres immediately counterattack aiming not just to drive them off but to surround and kill them."

"Brontotheres have a good tactical sense, so they are a natural form of heavy cavalry, as Dahl suggested. They coordinate their efforts through their magical gift of projecting imagery, similar to Mind Speech only with pictures."

"Are you saying that brontotheres are magical creatures like unicorns?" Artor asked.

"Exactly. Both species use magic, though brontotheres rely much more on their physical powers."

"You should have seen the brontotheres in New Varangia" Axel enthused, "when they charged a company of trolls. Finn and Dahl were in the lead mounted on a pair of young bulls who had befriended us. The angry brontotheres gored and trampled every one of the malefactors, reaffirming the lesson the brontotheres have taught their foes down through the ages: Don't mess with us."

"Axel can take some of the credit for helping us forge an alliance with the brontotheres who lived in the Barren Lands. He urged us to rescue five brontotheres trapped in a deep pit. Afterwards he had us show the brontotheres the slanting road which I myself had built up the escarpment that for ages had blocked them from expanding into a region perfectly suited to them."

"Dahl cemented our alliance when he lead a charge of brontotheres against a force of trolls. There is proof that the concept of brontotheres as heavy cavalry can work."

Queen Seerah's face tightened as she thought back to how Dahl had similarly enlisted brontotheres in a charge that crushed the life out of her daughter and the battalion of infantry she commanded.

Oblivious to the Queen's reaction, Karel jumped in with one of his jokes.

"And for us the brontotheres will be not only our heavy cavalry but specifically our lancers," Karel quipped, holding his fists to his temples with the index fingers pointing forward in a reference to the twin horns of the brontotheres.

Jemsen rolled his eyes.

"Hey! Direct that look at Dahl. He started it." Karel said defensively.

From his psychic link to his twin, Karel was pretty sure that the same quip had popped into Jemsen's head. Karel had just beat him to the punch line, that was all.

Frowning at their banter, which Dahl considered ill-timed given the Queen's presence, he spoke to her via Mind Speech on a private channel:

<Sorry about that, Seerah. I knew that the subject of brontotheres would distress you. You can understand though why I had to make my suggestion.>

<I do understand, Dahl. And don't be too hard on that blond boy Karel for his silly joke. I am sure that he meant no harm. If anything he lightened my mood. I gather Karel is the jokester of your group.>

<He is that, even more than his twin. Despite all the grim sights they have witnessed Karel and his brother have maintained a cheery outlook on life. Karel has a good heart, and he's really smart too. He is a co-inventor of contour lines for mapping and a Pioneer of Flight. Oh, and did I mention that he is really rich?>

<Those things would make him a fine catch for the right woman, but I understand that he fancies only boys. Too bad. His blood line would strengthen us Amazons.>

<It would, but it is just not going to happen.>

<What a waste!>

<His lovers don't think so. They include me.>

<Why am I not surprised?>

Since Mind Speech was so fast, no one noticed the time Dahl and Seerah took for their exchange. Resuming sonic speech Dahl said:

"I am pretty sure we druids can recruit the brontotheres to our cause. It's their cause too. Amazon scouts report that the trolls regard the brontotheres as so much meat on the hoof. The beasts are furious, but their natural armaments are of little use against bodies of trained troops armed with caltrops and fire globes and supported by cavalry. The momentum of horse and rider can drive the point of a lance through even the two-inch thick skin of a brontothere, not to mention what ballistas can do."

"Which is where we druids can make our greatest contribution to the campaign." Merry said. "Working directly with brontotheres, I mean."

"We three will go among the brontotheres and persuade the herds to ally themselves with us and the Amazons. Sir Willet's fetching and magnetic powers and the Klarendes' control of heat and fire can neutralize both the caltrops and the fire globes of the trolls. And the earth magic wielded by druids and Jemsen can stop a cavalry charge in its tracks. That will let the herds use their juggernaut tactics against their enemies."

"We three druids will guide the brontotheres and coordinate our maneuvs with each other and the rest of you via Mind Speech. Taking converging lines of approach we can hit them from one direction, then, when they turn to face that threat, from a different direction."

"If only we had heavy infantry that could attack them from the rear, but all we have is light infantry." Klarendes observed.

"What do you mean?" the Queen asked. "We train our soldiers as heavy infantry; they fight with the spear in close combat as well as the crossbow, which is their stand-off weapon."

Klarendes pointed out that the female soldiers who comprised the Amazon army were physically no match for trolls. Amazons might be good sized women and not far short of the same height as trolls but they had only half the mass.

In the final analysis Amazons were merely human. Trolls were a different race of beings: large-bodied creatures with heavy bones and a powerful musculature. Not particularly tall they generally stood six feet but weighed three hundred pounds. Their hairy bodies and snouts armed with tusks made them look more like animals rather than the human beings their race had sprung from.

No, the Amazons must never engage the trolls with spears in close combat, Klarendes told them. Such tactics might work against other humans but not trolls. Instead the Amazons should attack with their stand off weapon, the repeating crossbow. It was true that crossbows would be outranged by the powerful long bows drawn by trolls but only till the women closed the range.

Jemsen agreed with Count Klarendes' tactical analysis but said that the solution to the physical mismatch was for the Amazons to engage the trolls in a series of battles where the Amazons positioned themselves behind earthworks and let the trolls attack them. With his wizardry Jemsen could throw up earthen berms to give the Amazons cover from troll arrows. A deep trench on the side facing the trolls would keep the enemy from getting close enough for hand to hand combat.

Then there was the problem of disparate numbers, just over one-hundred thousand trolls versus nineteen thousand Amazons, the largest expeditionary force that could be drawn from their regular army whose maneuver forces numbered only twenty-three thousand. The rest were scattered in garrisons, headquarters and logistical support, training camps, and so forth. Their militia would stay at home. They were neither trained nor equipped to take the fight to the enemy, nor did they have the necessary transport nor logistical support.

As to why their regular army was so small, the Queen explained that they had never needed a larger one. Having no hostile neighbors on their borders and protected by geographical barriers the Amazons had never had to fight a full-scale war. Their military was really for defense against occasional bands of marauders, river pirates, or slavers who thought a country ruled by women would be easy pickings.

As for the militia, it guaranteed the power of the matriarchy by making uprisings and rebellions by males futile. Smaller in stature, untrained, and unorganized the stunted Amazon males had no hope of overthrowing the female regime of the Amazons.

"Anyhow how is our Amazon army going to cross the sea of reeds?" asked the Amazon commander, General MarAna. "We can't move over twenty thousand soldiers and their logistical train through the narrow commercial canal. So is one of you wizards or druids going to open a space portal for us?"

Klarendes shook his head.

"No. We will need your forces established and formed up on solid ground well past the reeds and in plenty of time and with room for maneuver before they launch their attack in support of the brontotheres and mages."

After some discussion, the group decided that the Amazons would arrive by entirely conventional means, a flotilla of shallow draft cargo boats which would shuttle their army across the sea of reeds. The only magic involved would be in building a new and wider canal across the reeds.

The route of the canal led from the lake which marked the upper basin of the river to the southern edge of the reeds at the point where the Amazon River proper started its long journey to the Great Inland Freshwater Sea. After the war, the canal would become the Amazons' commercial link to the outer world.

The first step in construction was for Dahl to use his life magic to wither the reeds along the whole course of the canal. Once that was finished his job was done, so he left with Owain and Merry to rally herds of brontotheres to the cause.

After a couple of days to let the reeds dry out, the Klarendes, father and son, threw streams of fire to burn them off section by section over the course of a couple of days. Karel blew jets of air both to fan the flames to ensure complete combustion and to disperse the smoke lest it rise like a smoke signal and draw the attention of troll scouts.

On the third day Jemsen excavated a canal deep enough and wide enough for deep draft river boats and big barges like those that plied the river west of the swamps. In the future they could navigate right up to the the small city on the lake beyond the reeds which served as the Amazon capital. The levees Jemsen erected and the deep water of the canal would keep the reeds from growing back and reclaiming their old territory.

Chapter 2. Roundup

With the preliminaries over the druids split up, going off in different directions to enlist the support of the brontotheres. Axel took his leave of Sir Willet to partner with Dahl. One purpose of partnering with Dahl was that as the druid opened gates every such point would be one more locale Axel himself could Jump to directly with his gift.

Levitating by gravitational repulsion to five hundred feet for a bird's eye view of the northern sector of the brontothere range Dahl fixed several locales in his memory then dropped down to the ground and opened a gate to the farthest herd he would try to enlist.

Dahl and Axel stepped through to a grassy knoll only a couple of hundred yards from a herd numbering fifty beasts. More curious than alarmed given the differential in size and numbers, the animals studied the visitors calmly as two-legged creatures walked toward them.

"Magnificent beasts, these brontotheres of yours, Dahl." Axel enthused marveling at their sheer size. "No wonder you took them as your totem."

Magnificent was the right word for brontotheres. Quadrupeds built much like the nose-horn or rhino but as massive as an elephant, brontotheres stood eight feet tall at the shoulder and weighed up to nine tons. Remarkably placid in temperament though fearsome when aroused, they had no natural enemies, protected as they were by their bulk and strength and a thick skin folded to suggest a suit of armor. If they had to fight, both sexes were armed with two bony horns sprouting from the forehead and pointing straight ahead.

Living in herds of thirty or forty beasts under the benign rule of a matriarch, brontotheres were browsers as much as grazers, their preferred habitat the brushy transition zones between forests and grasslands. In the vast region west of the sea of reeds, they roamed at will and numbered in the thousands.

At first the brontotheres were wary of the mages who came among them. Humans were not the first two legged creatures to intrude on their domain. News of the depredations of the trolls had reached nearly all parts of their territory. The herds nearer the troll army had sent warning to those further on.

Brontotheres did not have the power of speech but at short range they could communicate via projected mental imagery. When linked together, a herd mind was as close to sentient as made no difference. This allowed the druids to "talk" with brontotheres using a visual form of their Mind Speech to project images into their minds.

Dahl explained the threat and how the druids and mages could counter and even nullify the trolls' tactical advantages, which would give the brontotheres a chance to wreak vengeance on the trolls who were butchering their fellows.

Dahl had to persuade rather than compel the brontotheres to join the cause. The intelligence of the brontotheres put them under the protection of the ban on the mental compulsion of sentient beings, something deemed both a crime and a sin among all civilized peoples on Haven.

Outraged by the murderous attacks of the trolls and frustrated by their inability to come to grips with the offenders against caltrops and fire and conscious of their vulnerability to attack by lancers, the brontotheres very much wanted a chance to get back at their enemies, but how could these humans counter the caltrops and the incendiaries the trolls could use to drive the brontotheres off and what of their cavalry?.

Dahl demonstrated some of his powers. As an examples of earth magic, he sank the earth to form a bowl in earth about twenty yards across then tapped the water table to create a spring-fed watering hole which saved the brontotheres the trouble of walking two miles to the nearest stream.

He then showed that he could create a deep trench, a barrier impassable for a brontothere being too wide for a brontothere to step across and too deep for one to step into and then climb out of. If it could stop them it would stop a cavalry charge. After closing the trench back up Dahl showed how he could accelerate plant growth and conceal a herd behind a screen of bamboo by making tiny new shoots grow to twelve feet in minutes.

The young druid told the brontotheres that he and his fellow druids could call thunderstorms to pelt the trolls with hailstones or blast them with lightning bolts. Vines and motile runners and creepers could be made to wind around the lower limbs of trolls and hold them fast or twist around their necks to strangle them. The threat from troll archery would be nullified by turning their shafts into clouds of dandelion seeds.

{Why dandelion seeds?} the matriarch thought to Dahl in pictures. He replied with pictures of his own:

{The feathery bristles of the tiny seeds will catch the wind, come to a halt, and disperse as loose airy puffs. Without the inertia of the shafts the arrowheads will lose momentum and guidance and fall harmlessly to the ground. Lancers too will be rendered empty handed as the shafts of their weapons came apart in a cloud of feathery bristles.}

Dahl reported that the matriarch and the members of the herd were impressed by what druids could do. The brontotheres were now willing to join in an attack on the trolls.

{Your powers are indeed impressive, but what we brontotheres find most remarkable about you is that you can totter around on only two legs without falling over!}

"Ha, ha, ha!" {and yes Great One, that sound I just made is how we two legs indicate amusement.}

"Wait till you see them charge, Axel. It's absolutely awesome. Their battle cry is so loud you'll have to cover your ears. Their footfalls shake the ground like an earthquake and rumble like thunder. And they cover ground fast. Before you know it, they will be upon their enemy, bowling them over, goring them with their horns, even rearing up to smash the full weight of their forequarters on their prostrate forms."

"That's all very well and good Dahl, but how can the two of us stay safe and out of harm's way amid hundreds of angry four legged giants who are charging about, goring and trampling everything in sight? Not to mention that the trolls won't take too kindly to our presence either."

"OK, I'll explain the problem to the brontotheres and ask them to let us ride them just as Finn and I rode those two friendly brontotheres in New Varangia, Tyr and Hodr. Thanks to their steady gait it's easy to ride a brontothere which is only walking. A charging brontothere is something else again. We'll need a harness and stirrups like those Finn and I used in New Varangia. That made it possible for Finn to stand up and brace himself when he flung his war hammer Mjolnir. As riders we would be safe enough in a charge."

The brontotheres were astonished by Dahl's request, asking:

{What a bizarre notion! Whatever made you think we would allow humans to ride us?}

Dahl responded with an abbreviated narrative of how the expedition of humans and Frost Giants to the Barren Lands had rescued five brontotheres trapped in an old open pit mine of the ancients. Later two young bulls shared their adventures, even letting Finn Ragnarson and Dahl ride them into battle against trolls who had killed a brontothere for its meat and held others penned up awaiting slaughter in their turn.

{We can see from the story you have related that it is only the hairy two-legs are our enemies. You other two legs with smooth bodies and flat faces and the bigger ones [i.e. Frost Giants] are our friends and should be our allies once again against the hairy ones with snouts.}

"The matriarch did wonder though how two little guys like us could clamber atop a brontothere. She supposed we would have to scramble up a tree like monkeys then drop onto the backs of our mounts from an overhanging branch."

"Monkeys, eh? They don't give us much credit, do they? All right. Let's show them what we are capable of, first with just our physical abilities then with our magical powers."

"That sounds good, Axel. What exactly did you have in mind?"

Dahl grinned as Axel explained his idea.

The druid asked a couple of brontotheres to stand normally though with their left front legs extended at an angle to their bodies. Starting from twenty yards away the boys ran full tilt at the brontotheres using their momentum to run right up the extended leg then perched themselves nimbly atop their mounts. To dismount the boys took a couple of steps along the brontothere's back then did forward flips and landed lightly on their feet, arms extended for balance. Finally they straightened up and took a bow.

Their acrobatic antics drew an appreciative rumble from the amused brontotheres.

<Oops!> Dahl thought to Axel on a private channel.

<Oh yeah? Wait till they see what we do next!>

The boys stepped back from their mounts a good fifty yards. Dahl went first, levitating into place by gravitational repulsion then settling himself atop his mount. Then it was Axel's turn. One instant he was fifty yards away; the next he blinked into existence atop his mount. For the finale, Axel jumped himself and his mount back to where he had started. This time the brontotheres were really impressed, except for his own mount who was startled by the sudden displacement.

"The trolls are in for an unpleasant surprise the next time the brontotheres charge them." Dahl assured Axel, adding "And don't worry about archers. I'll turn any arrows shot our way into dandelion seeds. Besides you'll be wearing your leather cuirass and that steel helmet of yours."

"I can foresee what will happen." Dahl continued:

"Sir Willet's and Artor Klarendes' magic will sweep away the caltrops and and snuff the fires of their incendiaries. Thanks to Jemsen's earth magic, their own lancers will find that the ground they are charging across has suddenly become pockmarked with enough gopher holes to trip their mounts, break their legs, throw their riders to the ground, and crush both in an unholy tangle of broken bones, screaming horseflesh, and wounded and dying riders. And I shudder to think what Karel might do with a sun mirror or the Klarendes father and son with white fire."

Dahl set the first herd in motion toward their designated rendezvous. Three days would give them plenty of time to reach it even ambling along at an easy pace. The young druid wanted his heavy cavalry to arrive fresh and eager for the battle. Dahl and Dahl then gated to the next herd and then the next.

The results were the same. Leaving a matriarch and a couple of half-grown bulls to look over the younglings, the rest of the herd started toward their rendezvous with destiny. Actually they were early. It wasn't till a week later that enemy dispositions made it propitious for the druids and the brontotheres to launch their attacks.

At the rendezvous the brontotheres chose the mounts their two-legged allies would ride on campaign. Dahl's mount was the largest of the matriarchs while Axel's was a powerful bull. Fearsomely armed, its forward pointing horns were longer than Axel's arm and as thick at the base as his thigh. In a nod to Karel's silly joke about the brontotheres as heavy cavalry, he decided to name his beast Lancer.

The two brontotheres stood patiently while Dahl anchored a harness made of vines around their forequarters and the base of their horns. It provided stirrups and handholds though no saddle and certainly no bridle or hackamore or anything that might control the mount. No one controlled a brontothere, not even a rider. At best a rider might ask not tell their mount what they wanted them to do.

Dahl taught their mounts and Axel the verbal signals he and Finn had used in New Varangia to tell their mounts Tyr and Hodr where they wanted to go, when they wanted them to stop and so forth, always couched as requests.

Brontotheres are so intelligent as to be nearly sentient and could communicate via projected imagery. They also conveyed mood and intention by stance, body language and oral cues which facilitated their complex social lives. Axel's mount Lancer readily accepted the small human as a new friend. Maybe Axel couldn't project imagery but the brontothere could read the emotions underlying the human's gestures and utterances, undecipherable as human speech might be to a creature so different.

Dahl and Axel strengthened their bond with their brontotheres by providing small services for them. Twice a day they inspected the bottoms of their foot pads to remove bits of grit or sharp stones which might in time work their way deeper and trouble even these mighty beasts. Lancer rumbled contentedly when Axel used a stiff brush to scrub the spots on his sandpaper skin where it needed scratching or swabbed antiseptic oils on abrasions and small cuts. Not every part of a brontothere's skin was as thick as armor.

Axel couldn't help noticing how Lancer looked longingly at the immature tamarind pods hanging on the trees, obviously wishing they were ripe and would fall at his feet. Axel enlisted Dahl to invoke his druidical powers to ripen the tamarinds and fed the now ripe pods to Lancer who rumbled appreciatively for the great beast was inordinately fond of the sweet and sour taste of the tamarind pod.

Now Axel had a sweet tooth too. In particular he loved cherries. Through Dahl he asked Lancer for help in harvesting the wild cherries growing on a tree next to their camp site. Lancer was happy to oblige, bumping the tree trunk hard enough to shake loose a goodly number of cherries to the ground for Axel to gather and wash in the stream. Axel and Dahl then sat with their backs to the trunk of the tree and ate cherries, spitting the pits out as they went.

"Funny how Lancer isn't eating any of the cherries. There are still plenty of them strewn about."

Dahl concentrated for a moment, communicating with Lancer via mental imagery and told Axel.

"Brontotheres don't bother with wild cherries. There is just the occasional tree here and there, so not enough for a herd. Besides, cherries are tiny and as much pit as fruit. No our large friends leave cherries for the monkeys."

"So we're monkeys again, eh?" Axel chuckled.

With just the two of them, Dahl and Axel had to content themselves with only the most basic of camps. Dahl used earth magic to clear the ground for the campfire. Axel built the fire from dead wood he gathered, igniting the kindling with a small magic Sir Willet had taught him. It seems that those with the gift of Calling Light could more easily acquire the skill of kindling fire than most folks could.

Since it was the dry season, the campers did not need overhead cover though Dahl could always speed grow bushes and create a canopy from their interwoven branches. Rations were simple, whatever could be gathered locally, mostly greens and fruits plus tubers which could be buried in the sand under the fire to bake.

Druids were not vegetarians. They liked red meat and fish as much as the next fellow, but skinning and dressing a rabbit or some other critter and roasting it on a spit was just too slow and messy to bother with. Besides neither of them was much of a cook. They had always left that task to others.

Seated around the merrily crackling campfire afterwards the pair chatted companionably about everything except their mission. For one so young, Axel was extremely well-read, but then he was a denizen of the research library at the Institute of Wizardry and Magic. Dahl spoke of his travels all over Valentia and of the three years that he and Merry and Owain had spent on Karelia rebuilding the depleted cadre of druids on that continent.

Lancer was interested in everything his strange new friends did, watching attentively while they did surpassing things like strip off what he took to be an outer skin and a very thin one at that. It was just their silk uniforms which they washed in the creek and hung them on branches to dry.

Remarkably these two-legged creatures did not recoil from fire but deliberately set one to burning right in the middle of their camp.

"Funny isn't it," Axel observed, "how we have been friends for some years now but have never spent any real time together, just the two of us I mean."

With his druidical senses, Dahl knew perfectly well what the cute red-head was getting at. Axel fancied him. That much was obvious from the quaver in his voice and the scent of his pheromones and the way he kept looking over at Dahl's nude body.

Not that the young druid wasn't attracted to the wizard's aide. Axel was a real catch: a slightly built, copper topped, and boyishly cute youth with a sprinkling of freckles on his face and heart melting dimples. The boy had the hard body of an athlete or acrobat from regular exercise - his physique enhanced by healing magic with all that implied including a heightened sex drive.

Dahl spread his camouflage cloak as a ground sheet and indicated that Axel should stretch out next to him. Wordlessly, his heart in his throat, Axel lay down next to the scrumptious young druid. Dahl smiled at the way the youth trembled like the fawn he so much resembled.

"I don't bite, you know." he teased. "Well, not usually."

"Uh, Dahl, before this goes any further I gotta ask about Merry and Owain..."

"Don't worry. Neither of them is going to turn you into a toad just for alienating my affections." Dahl joked. "Anyway, what happens on walkabout stays on walkabout, as Aodh always says."

"So this is a walkabout then?"

"After a fashion. That doesn't mean I will drop you as soon as we get back to civilization. I really am glad we are taking our relationship to a new level."

Dahl reached out and stroked the silky skin of Axel's inner thigh. Axel went stiff, both in posture and otherwise.

"Now there's an encouraging sign. So with both of us raring to go Axel, stop stalling and kiss me already!"

The youths then joined their bodies in all the ways that active young males can, trading roles as top and bottom and also providing mutual oral service. For their third coupling of the evening, Dahl stretched out on his back with Axel astride him riding his cock for all he was worth. Reaching orgasm he growled and yelled and whipped his head back and forth just as his partner matched him and filled his quim with his seed.

At that precise juncture, Lancer stuck his head close and inhaled deeply to take in the scent of the mating pair.

"Hey, ya big lug! Don't you know three's a crowd?" Axel scolded the big animal good-naturally, giving his massive head a friendly slap and laughing at the absurdity of it all. There was no need for Dahl to translate Axel's words into projected imagery. Just from Axel's tone and manner Lancer recognized the humor in the situation and gave back the distinctive rumble which, for a brontothere, equated to laughter.

Meanwhile, from all across the vast flatland herd after herd gathered around their rendezvous spots, five watering holes nearest where the battle would be fought. All told they numbered sixteen hundred in three contingents, each under a particular matriarch. A single contingent of five or six hundred had greater shock effect than an entire cavalry brigade in the army of the Commonwealth.

In the fight that was shaping up the druid with each group would guide and support but not command the brontotheres. The lineup was Sir Willet with Owain, Artor Klarendes with Merry, and Axel with Dahl.

Chapter 3. Amazons

The first action by the Amazons in the eastern campaign, as the mages now called it, was an all-out bombardment of the troll base camp on the shore of the sea of reeds, the location from which the enemy hoped to dig their own access canal. The air corps of autogyros, now numbering fourteen and piloted by Amazon fetchers, dropped incendiaries refined from local rock oil to set the entire installation on fire. Warehouses, barracks, armories, storehouses, stables, and granaries burned furiously. The smoke rose as from a funeral pyre to mark the beginning of the end of troll ambitions in Amazonia.

The Amazons' new air corps had given a good account of themselves against a stationary target. The next time they flew into battle it would be against a army formed for battle. The bombings also took the attention of the trolls away from the movements of the Amazon ground forces. Thus the Amazons managed to bring their entire field army unmolested through the sea of reeds and deployed them in preparation for receiving the attack on the oncoming horde of trolls.

The Amazon army had crossed the sea of reeds under the watchful eye of Queen Seerah and the army commander General Marlina. The general commanded the army. The queen was really there to show the flag and to share the discomforts of the campaign and the fate of her army and with it that of her people, for if their Army were swept aside, the Amazon state would fall.

Councilor Vannsetta presided over the government back at the capital. In theory, the council could appoint a new queen if anything happened to Seerah, but realistically the new queen would not occupy her throne for long, not after the genocidal trolls ravaged the land.

Though all the fighters in the army were women, there were plenty of young males serving with them in supporting roles as riggers, laborers, cooks, and litter bearers. Unarmed except for camp knives, unarmored, and unclothed, they were all volunteers. Their motivation was more than just the greater privileges and comforts the had been promised once the war was over. They knew the trolls would kill them too. Besides, anyone could see that under the new dispensation, males were getting a better deal than they had in the past. That better future was something worth saving.

No plan long survives first contact with the main strength of the enemy, and that rule certainly applied in this campaign. Instead of the Amazons attacking the trolls while they were already engaged with the brontotheres, it was going to be the other way around.

The deployment of the Amazon army had drawn the attention of the oncoming horde of trolls. There was nothing else for it, but for the women to give battle first. Once the attention of the trolls was on them, the brontotheres would attack.

Now the Amazon army was not alone in this fight. In direct support they had the twins, Count Klarendes, Aodh, and Corwin who would wield powerful magic against the common foe. Karel stood with the left wing, Jemsen took his post in the center, while the three members of the Klarendes clan were on the right. With them were liaison officers and messengers to keep them apprised of the general's intentions and wishes.

Forty thousand trolls formed a shield wall facing half as many Amazons. They jeered at mere women who had the effrontery to challenge troll males on the field of battle. Some stepped forward and clutched themselves down there and thrust their hips lewdly, making very clear the fate which would befall any Amazons taken alive.

Realistically the trolls did not think there would be very many left for their army to rape, certainly not enough to go around. But once the army of women army was brushed aside, the trolls could rape their way through their entire population, males as well as females.

The trolls had long preferred to "forage" for females and young males from all races who would be raped before they were killed. And the conquest of the land of the Amazons would be doubly satisfactory. First it would give the trolls the chance to put an entire race of uppity females in their place. Afterwards the trolls could turn their attentions to the ineffectual and reputedly effeminate males the Amazons had long dominated.

The orgy of rape and rapine was no more than the soldiers in the troll army were entitled to. After all troll armies on campaign never dragged along a gaggle of camp followers to slake the lusts of their males. It was deemed better to accept a little bad morale than the encumbrance of a bunch of females and hangers-on and look to the lands they conquered to provide outlets for the sexual urges of the soldiers.

The troll infantry advanced on the Amazons, their cavalry spread out on their flanks ready to exploit the imminent breakthrough. The troll infantry brandished their long-hafted axes and shouted war cries and threats. When their archers got close enough they loosed an arrow storm which fell on the Amazons. Companies of troll archers advanced leapfrog fashion after every few shots. The Amazons took many casualties, poorly protected as they were by light wicker shields. That was the price they paid to lure the trolls who used long bows into crossbow range.

That was when Jemsen levitated via gravitational repulsion for a final look-see then set himself down in front of the Amazons shield wall and invoked his earth magic, digging a deep trench and piling the dirt he had excavated into a berm behind which the Amazons could take cover as they wielded their crossbows.

Now it was the turn of the trolls to experience an arrow storm with no way to reply. Oh, their archers had long bows which could loft arrows over the berm, but firing blindly was very much hit and miss and mostly miss. Most important, such high angle fire could not hit the Amazons on the firing line but only those farther back who were more spread out. The contest between crossbow and long bow was now very uneven.

The trolls were also under attack by the Amazon air corps which shuttled autogyros over the troll positions and dropped incendiaries. Kegs of combustible oils hit the ground and burst open, splashing the trolls and catching fire from red hot steel or lead balls dropped with the kegs.

The troll general saw that those in his front ranks were taking heavy losses with nothing to show for it. He tried to disengage, but Jemsen created another trench which trapped half his infantry, splitting it from the rest of the army which could no longer maneuver in support of the forward elements. He gave the order for his cavalry to move out to beyond the deep gash in the earth and charge the Amazons, hoping to roll up their line.

That was when the twins traded places. Karel would now hold the center while Jemsen invoked earth magic again, this time against cavalry attacking the left flank. Karel's air wizardry was being held in reserve.

From his vantage point in the sky Jemsen watched till the enemy cavalry got about halfway before pockmarking the ground they charged over with hundreds of gopher holes. Invisible in the two foot high grass, the gopher holes were twice the width of a hoof and more than a foot deep, ensuring a crippling injury to any equine which stepped into one.

With cavalry charging at top speed the holes did what Jemsen wanted them to: trip up, their mounts, break their legs, throw their riders to the ground, and crush both in an unholy tangle of broken bones, tormented horseflesh, and wounded and dying riders, which made easy targets for the crossbows of the Amazons on that flank.

On the right, Count Klarendes waited for the Amazon general's signal then cut loose with white fire scything the riders down by the hundreds, going at it again and again. He had no worries about a psychic backlash from killing large numbers of trolls. It was not like killing eastern barbarians who, after all, were fellow humans. Nor did the slain trolls leave grisly remains behind. Troll, horses, weapons, and equipment all disintegrated and became of a part of the stream of white fire which dispersed into the atmosphere once Taitos cut off the magical energy that created white fire.

Corwin helped out with his new technique of hurling explosive balls of lighting into the midst of the charging cavalry which burst with a flash and an electric crackle electrocuting or tearing apart horse and rider and leaving grisly piles of disjointed limbs, guts, and charred body parts.

"Good work, nephew," Count Klarendes told him with pardonable exaggeration, "Your explosive technique is nearly as effective as my white fire, if rather messier." White fire left no remains behind.

Back on the left flank Jemsen was still levitated over to the left wing trying to see what else he might do to help. Karel himself stood by the berm to provide a missile shield for the Amazon archers, one he could raise and drop at an instant and extend the length of the berm. The archers would fire a dozen arrows from their repeating crossbows, then, while they reloaded, Karel called up a lens of hardened air to block the return fire from troll long bows. Together his shield and the berm Jemsen had thrust up neutralized the arrow storm tactics of the trolls.

On the left a squad of horse archers suddenly broke loose from the confusion and circling past the gopher holes rode up close to the Amazons shooting arrows from their short recurved bows before peeling away. The results were most unfortunate. One of the shafts caught Jemsen in the belly.

"Nooo!" Karel screamed as he saw his airborne brother transfixed by the shaft, then drop and hit the ground heavily. While Amazon crossbows, lightning casters and sparklers gave covering fire, nude male litter bearers ran out onto the field and carried the wounded youth to safety.

Karel ran over at breakneck speed, assisted by a jet of wind at his back. He found Jemsen in terrible pain but still alive. His brother was sorely hurt, but the lady healers would surely save his life. If there was one area of magic in which the Amazons excelled it was Healing.

Much as he wanted to stay at his brother's side Karel knew he would just get in the way of the healers. After thanking the brave litter bearers, Karel's turned his powers to making sure that none of the cavalry on the left would ever again hurt his twin so grievously. Invoking air magic, he created a trio of sun mirrors, which were mirages in the sky made of hardened air. Two flat mirrors reflected the sun into a parabolic mirror focussed on the troll cavalry, creating a beam of intense heat which he swept from side to side.

Neither ordinary combustion nor the subatomic plasma called white fire but simply the reflected heat energy of the sun, Karel's beam was nowhere near so hot as white fire but was ten times hotter than the flames and fireballs of a firecaster.

Visible more as a shimmer in the air than as a beam of light, it scorched the ground and incinerated the hostile force. In that intense heat horse and rider did not simply burn; they flash charred into ashen simulacra of rider and mount, which, lacking cohesion, slumped into formless piles of cinders. Not satisfied there, Karel returned to the center and stood on the berm behind a shield of hardened air, then repositioned his mirrors and directed his beam at the remaining archers on the far side of the berm which Jemsen had thrown up. All nearby threats removed, he broke off to attend to his brother.

The healers had saved Jemsen's life and magically repaired the perforated abdominal wall and the damage to the viscera from the arrow and cleansed the wound of filth and infection. Jemsen had landed on his right side and broken both arm and leg and cracked some ribs, but their magic had knit his bones whole again too. Still he was advised to stay off his feet for a few days while his bones knit fully and his system adjusted to the shock.

Jemsen's ordeal left him weak and put him out of the fight though he would make a full recovery in a few days. Karel slumped with relief, sitting shakily on the next cot.

"We gotta stay close, Jemsen, so we can protect each other. I can't help thinking that if I been at your side, I could have protected you, that is us, with a shield of hardened air which would have deflected that arrow."

"Don't blame yourself, Karel. If it was anyone's fault it was my own for showing off like that, levitating over the battlefield as if I were the monarch of all I surveyed. My silly pride made me a target. But you are right about staying close. From now on we'll do things as we always have -- side by side, in war as in peace."

"And in bed too." Karel added with a weak grin. The poor joke was Karel's way of relieving stress.

The brothers smiled and embraced as Taitos, Corwin, and Aodh looked on, eyes glistening. They all knew how terribly close the twins were.

The Amazons did not wait for supply wagons to come up from the rear. Instead they marched around the ends of Jemsen's trench and recovered many of the arrows they had expended. With full quivers they were ready for the next phase of the battle. While they were at it, they used their spears to finish off any wounded trolls. That was the logic of hard war: no quarter and no prisoners.

Chapter 4. Brontotheres

Now it was the turn of the brontotheres. Now it might seem that even sixteen hundred of the giant beasts would be outmatched by the more than seventy thousand trolls still in the field, but the brontotheres would not have to attack all their foes at once. It wasn't just Jemsen who could call on earth magic to divide the battlefield into manageable pieces. Druids were strong in earth magic too. Alternatively the druids could flash grow barriers of thorny cane brakes to cut off a part of the troll army from the support of the rest.

Dahl's contingent of brontotheres faced off against eight thousand trolls who were confident that they had little to fear from five hundred beasts, no matter their size. They had ways to counter the fearsome charge of the brontotheres. The simplest was caltrops scattered by hand right in front of their shield wall.

A caltrop is a foot trap with four spikes or points arranged in a tetrahedron so that when thrown on the ground it rested on three points and presented the fourth upright ready to impale the hoofs of horses or the feet of infantry. They were generally made of steel though even the dried seeds of the water chestnut could be used as caltrops against poorly shod infantry.

The brontotheres were counting on their two-legged allies to sweep the field of the caltrops strewn in front of the shield wall of the trolls. Now Dahl could not do it himself. He was neither a fetcher nor a master of magnetism. So he asked Axel to Jump to Karel's location and bring him back.

"Caltrops, eh?" Karel said as Dahl explained the problem. "Okay, I'll just call up a land spout to suck them off the ground and out of the way."

An air wizard like Karel could call both dust devils and a stronger type of whirlwind called a land spout, an atmospheric rather than a meteorological phenomenon which only weather wizards controlled. Land spouts were not associated with a thunderstorm and had a characteristic tubular shape rather than the funnel of the tornado.

The trolls watched with dismay as a whirlwind two hundred feet high scooped up their caltrops and dropped them well out of the way. They readied fire globes and flung the glass spheres filled with an inflammable liquid at the charging brontotheres, but Karel countered them with a jet of air that blew the globes back at the trolls.

Some had slings with red hot coals ready to fling in front of the shield wall and ignite the oil. These unfortunates became their own funeral pyres as the globes broke and the liquid splashed onto them and took fire.

The trolls now faced the oncoming brontotheres with only their personal weapons. Their arrow storm tactics were of little use against the thick skin of the brontothere. What use was an axe against an armed and armored giant as tall at the shoulder as a frost giant and weighing eight or nine tons?

From atop the matriarch Dahl nullified a good fraction of the arrow storm by turning the shafts of the arrows into dandelion seeds then disarmed a contingent of lancers the same way as the shafts couched under their arms disintegrated and blew away. Meanwhile Axel used the carbine version of Eike's air gun to pick off trolls bent on hamstringing brontotheres, a suicide mission even if successful. Good thing he had practiced with the airgun during mock charges during their approach to the battlefield. Marksmanship from atop a fast moving brontothere was problematic.

With the magic of their two-legged allies having swept away caltrops, nullified their flame weapons and a good part of their archery, the charge of the brontotheres was unstoppable. Roaring their war cry they crunched into the shield wall of the trolls and gored them with their horns or simply bowled them over and trampled them into the ground.

Not for nothing were the giant beasts known as the juggernauts of the jungle, though that phrase owed more to the attractions of alliteration than to strict accuracy. Jungles were no more the habitat of brontotheres than were desert wastes.

Actually some of the brontotheres did take wounds from arrows which penetrated weak spots in their armored skin or hit them in the face or their lower legs. Their new two-legged friends drew out the arrows and treated the wounds with an antiseptic from Axel's medical kit. Among his other roles, Axel was a combat medic. He treated axe cuts the same way, though in some cases, Dahl had to invoke his healing powers to regrow lost eyes or the tips of their horns or teeth which had broken off.

The young druid only wished he could do more for the more seriously wounded of their four legged allies. Druidical healing magic was most effective with humans. The differences between human and brontothere anatomy and physiology limited what his healing magic could accomplish. Another hindrance was the sheer bulk of their huge bodies. The magical strength it took to heal a single badly injured brontothere might heal two dozen humans. Even the greater powers of female Healers were soon be exhausted dealing with multiple brontothere casualties.

During one charge Dahl's matriarch got bogged down in soft ground. As she struggled to extricate herself, trolls charged the stranded beast, intending to blind her for starters. Axel's mount Lancer charged to the rescue at the head of a party of a dozen bulls. Avoiding the quagmire, they gored the advancing trolls and bowled them over, trampling them underfoot as the impetus carried them on toward new foes.

Just when things were going so well, a ballista spear shot at point-blank range pierced Lancer's chest. It missed his heart but did tear through his lungs and viscera. As the great beast faltered and sank to his knees moaning horridly Axel jumped acrobatically to the ground beside his stricken mount.

While the other bulls dealt with the remaining trolls Dahl also dismounted and came over to see what he might do for poor Lancer. There was little even he could do except dull his pain. Massive blood loss from the wound and the red froth at Lancer's mouth showed that he was finished. He told Axel:

"It won't help Lancer if we just yank the spear out of him by main force. The barbs on the spearhead will cut even worse coming out than going in. Even if I turned the shaft into dandelion seeds, that would leave the steel spearhead inside him, still slicing his guts with every movement, including his tortured breathing."

"OK, so maybe Lancer is going to die, but it won't be with a damn troll spear in his guts. I'm going to grab the end psychically as well as physically and then Jump away with the entire spear, shaft, head, and all. That should ease his pain some."

Axel put a hand to the end of the spear the jumped a few yards away. With disgust he threw it to the ground crying "Filthy thing!".

Lancer's distress did ease considerably once Axel got the spear out of him. He rumbled his thanks to his two legged friend a sentiment echoed by the matriarch and Lancer's brontothere friends, the young bulls he had lead in his final charge. They gathered around for the death vigil. Within a half-hour brave Lancer was dead, his passing announced by a giant sigh which brought an end to his pain.

It was too much for Axel who burst into tears and cradled the great head of his four legged friend.

{Are those watery seepings from the boy's eyes the way you humans express grief?} the matriarch asked Dahl.

{Yes. We humans readily bond with animal friends and grieve at their passing.}

{This we did not know. The young man's grief confirms for us, as perhaps nothing else could, the wisdom of trusting you two-legs and forming an alliance against our common enemy. We will never forget you or your kind or what you have done for us.}

Brontotheres feel death as keenly as humans, but their rituals to mark a passing center on a sharing of memories of the deceased. The matriarch and the others projected mental imagery at a pace the druid could not easily follow. He realized ruefully that in communicating with him, the brontotheres had been using their equivalent of baby talk. Since burial was impossible brontotheres could only turn away from the ugliness of what happens after death and leave the body for the scavengers.

In Lancer's case, that was not good enough. So Dahl entombed Lancer's remains deep in the earth, beyond the reach of any scavenger. Not even worms could get at him. His corpse would slowly decay, consumed from within by the tiny creatures which inhabit all animate bodies.

The brontotheres fighting with Owain and Sir Willet had it easier, taking fewer casualties. Sir Willet used his control of magnetism to sweep the enemy's caltrops aside. Then when the trolls got ready to sling fire globes at the trolls Sir Willet invoked his firecaster magic to ignite all the oil in all the globes at once. Flames splashed all around engulfing the slinger and any troll standing nearby and totally disrupting the cohesion of their shield wall.

Forty brontotheres formed a wedge and charged through the wide gap in the shield wall which Sir Willet had opened with a blast of white fire. The war wizard hung on for dear life as his mount carried him along with the wedge into the mass of trolls. Wheeling left and right the brontotheres caught the trolls from the flank and the rear and wreaked fearsome destruction.

Sir Willet held a missile shield over himself and Owain and their huge mount and let the brontotheres do the fighting though at times he had to use his powers to fetch an axe out of the grasp of a troll who got too close to their mount. Owain helped by blinding any trolls who looked like a threat, afflicting their eyes with cataracts. Afterwards the druid hardly had to invoke his healing magic, there were so few casualties among his brontotheres.

Merry and Artor attacked with the third contingent of brontotheres. Artor countered both caltrops and flame globes at the same time, igniting the inflammable oil before the trolls had the chance to sow the field in front of them with caltrops. Merry countered trolls armed with long bows by turning the shafts of a good third of the arrows shot at them into dandelion seeds and blinded many other archers just as Owain had. Then Artor blasted the shield wall with white fire to open a breach though which the brontotheres charged and tore into the hapless trolls.

And so the campaign went as the brontotheres and their allies cut off a part of the troll army and crushed each detachment in turn. In one notable action Sir Willet countered a stealthy turning move by a division of trolls. Thanks to a concealment raised by Sir Willet troll scouts had quite professionally patrolled along the high ground, a ridge overlooking a swale which might conceal an enemy but has seen nothing except empty grasslands. They failed to detect the presence of the massed brontotheres waiting patiently till the scouts rode by all unknowing. A little while later the brontotheres caught up with the trolls and charged them from behind.

Via a Mind Speech conference, with the others linked in from separate locations, the druids and the others reviewed the results of the early battles.

<We've been doing terrifically well so far.> Axel enthused. <Let's hope it keeps up.>

<It won't. And you can take that from an old campaigner.> Count Klarendes said flatly. <In your first attacks you had the element of surprise in every respect. The enemy did not know that they even would be attacked, much less when, by whom, or how. In future attacks only the timing will be a surprise. The trolls have shown themselves to be tactically clever and adaptable and their combat engineers are as good as anyone's.>

The veteran campaigner was right. The trolls reacted to their initial defeats by bringing ballistas forward to shoot at the charging brontotheres early in their charge before they crashed into their shield wall.

Looking like a giant crossbow set atop a wheeled frame, a ballista could shoot an arrow the size of a spear and propel it with enough force to penetrate the hide of a brontothere and reach its vitals. Close up, an arrow from a ballista mighty penetrate even the thick skull of a brontothere.

A particularly innovative tactic was to employ trebuchets in field warfare. The trebuchet was normally a siege weapon which relied on leverage and a sling to hurl boulders at fortress walls. Against defenders it had the advantages of throw weight and long range, well beyond that of torsion catapults or long bows. Defenders could only watch helplessly as their walls were battered and broken from the impact with the boulders.

The trolls used a pair of trebuchets to fling bundles of caltrops wrapped in netting. Just before the bundles were launched the netting was doused in oil and set afire. At the top of its arc, the bundle fell apart and scattered the caltrops in front of the charging herd.

Nevertheless the brontotheres pressed on. The trebuchets threw the caltrops over a very wide area, so they were too few and far apart to do more than catch the unlucky among the approaching brontotheres. As for ballistas, there were only twelve with that whole division, not enough to drive off brontotheres when their blood was up. Nevertheless dozens were wounded by ballistas or caltrops and more than a dozen slain outright. No one could question the courage of the brontotheres nor their determination.

In the next engagement Axel destroyed two batteries of ballistas with incendiaries. Jumping to a supply point in the rear Axel touched a pair of kegs of combustible rock oil to which the male engineers attached a ceramic jar holding steel balls heated red hot. Axel jumped to a position five hundred feet above the ballistas and let them drop, then jumped back to his brontothere mount to watch them fall. When the kegs burst, the red hot bullets ignited the inflammable liquid destroying the batteries and a good part of their crews.

That was the theory, anyway. When he tried the tactic a second time Axel didn't quite gauge the point of release, which after all was just an empty point in the sky along a line of sight to the ballistas. So even though the wooden engines of war were stationary targets, his next attack found him arriving too far to one side. Even after he got the hang of it the time it took the kegs to fall gave their crews time to scramble out of the way. So only the ballistas but not the skilled artillerists who were just as much his targets burnt up in the resulting conflagration.

Troll commanders changed their tactics, now fielding their ballistas not as single batteries attached in support of an infantry battalions but massed in artillery battalions in support of entire regiments and brigades. Later they were all massed into a single artillery regiment to support the whole troll army as it drew together rather than operate as separate brigades and divisions.

Hoping that more ballistas might turn the tide, troll engineers, carpenters, and smiths outdid themselves devising and building new and bigger ballistas atop the frames of repurposed catapults.

The catapult was a type of heavy artillery which threw stones or iron balls in an arc. Designed for use against fortifications and infantry shield walls, they were useless against brontotheres. Their missiles nearly always dropped into the gaps between charging brontotheres. Just as well then to use their frames for bigger ballistas.

The result of design and engineering compromises, these new and more powerful engines of war could not match the accuracy and the rate of fire of the smaller ballistas, but they propelled an arrow with greater force. The engineers protected the ballistas from aerial attack with sheds in the shape of a A covered with fresh hides. The structures were sturdy enough to resist the impact and make the kegs bounce or roll off and the hides protected the underlying wood from the incendiary action of the kegs.

It was Aodh who came up with the best solution to the problem. Since the harassment campaign, the young wir had been forced to sit out the fight, charged as he was with guarding the command group from stay-behind ambuscades and raids. Trolls had been known to conceal themselves in what were called spider holes and let an enemy force set up came right over them, only to emerge at night and start killing key personnel.

Aodh had argued that the command group would not be in any danger during his absence, not after Jemsen had delved the entire camp and found no holes or voids. Plus the druids would have sensed life forms anywhere on the site of their marching camp as they arrived.

Aodh's proposed sending a small team to destroy the ballistas and to kill the skilled artillerists who manned them. After that the brontotheres could charge the trolls with impunity.

The strike team had four members: Axel whose job was to Jump them in and out, a perfect match for his unique set of powers. Corwin was to destroy the ballistas, while Aodh was tasked with killing their crews. Artor went along as protection from the inevitable troll reaction force. Except for Aodh, they all wore light leather armor including a steel helmet to protect their heads. Even powerful mages like them might be killed by a lucky shot from a sling or bow.

As dusk fell Axel stood on the back of his brontothere and peered through a far-viewer at the troll camp. Looking past the outer ring of trenches and the sea of tents sheltering the enemy host, he fixed the position of the artillery park in his mind.

Axel saw that it was invulnerable to direct attack defended as it was by an anti-cavalry barrier called a cheval de frise, an ancient term of uncertain origin. Whatever that term originally meant it referred to a device apparently inspired by the hedgehog or the porcupine. Built around a horizontal spar, really just a log with holes drilled through it, it bristled with spears or iron spikes which pierced it radially and alternately slanted left and right, each pair in the form of the letter X.

The barriers were lightweight enough to be dragged and dropped in place. With their spines interlocked and their lower points dug into the earth, the barrier would strongly resist a push while the points facing up and out would impale horses or brontotheres for that matter. The trolls emplaced their ballistas on ground from which they could shoot over the protective barrier. This made the defenses of the artillery park doubly dangerous to charging brontotheres.

In the pre-dawn hours, Axel and his team joined hands and jumped to the artillery park right next to one of the new shielded ballistas. Already naked, Aodh morphed into a black panther becoming virtually impossible to see in the dark, which was no hindrance to him since panthers can see quite well in the dimmest of light. The stealthy predator streaked in among the crews who were lying all around sound asleep and slashed the nearest trolls with his poison claws.

That put the artillerists out of action, but the engineers, carpenters, and smiths who had built the ballistas and were camped close by had time to form up and organize a hasty defense. Aodh incapacitated them with his sonic weapon, an intolerable screech which rendered them helpless and easy prey for claws that delivered near fatal doses of an incredibly potent venom which literally drove its victims mad with pain.

Their screams were Corwin's signal to lay about with his ball lightning which not only set fire to the wooden frames of the ballistas but melted and slagged the metal mechanisms and fittings plus the fastenings like nails and nuts and bolts that held them together. Wood might be replaced but not cast or forged metal parts.

To help them see, Axel Called Light, setting four blue-white globes to hovering twenty feet off the ground and about forty yards out, one in each of the cardinal directions.

Unfortunately that also gave enemy archers enough light to aim at Corwin who was especially conspicuous because of his ball lightning. One unlucky shaft hit him in the back and penetrated the boiled leather armor and cut into the flesh though not the shoulder blade beneath. Corwin fell to his knees and lost control of his gift for a moment. His ball lightning fizzled out.

Unable to reach the shaft to pull it out, he gritted his teeth against the pain, stood up, and called up three spheres of ball lightning, deploying them as a missile shield against the archers who had loosed at him. Sending two of them zipping forward he turned the archers into crispy critters.

Still good and mad Corwin threw explosive ball lightning at anyone and anything else within the ring of defenses, guided by the illumination shed by Axel's four blue white spheres. In very short order all the artillerists and technicians and most to the archers who had shot at him lay dead or dying.

Artor spotted the anticipated reaction force of some three hundred trolls forming up. Just before they charged, the young fire caster laid into them with white fire killing nearly all of them as his infernal beam swept through their ranks. He then flung clinging balls of fire in all directions at the surrounding army which by now was fully stirred up.

Just then two trolls dressed only in small clothes crept out from under the big ballista the team was standing around. Awakened from their impromptu shelter by all the excitement, the two had stayed hidden and bided their time, waiting to make their move. Artor looked vulnerable with his attention on the reaction force and his back to the trolls. They straightened up and advanced toward him axes raised.

Axel stopped them. With the advantages of surprise, superior speed, and agility, he went on the attack and stabbed the trolls in the back with his fist knives. Grasped by their T shaped hafts the knives had short triangular blades coated with Aodh's fast acting venom. The trolls fell to the ground screaming.

Artor whirled around, took in the situation and nodded as Axel told him:

"That was for Lancer!"

With the whole troll camp aroused against them, it was time to leave. Having done what they came for, the raiders joined hands, or in Aodh's case his paw, then jumped clear, materializing an instant later back at their own camp.

Artor and Axel brought Corwin to the healers who fixed him up just fine. Aodh changed back to his human form which also healed several knife and axe cuts he had taken in the melee, but he elected to stay naked and headed off to the kitchen for a midnight snack if only of leftover stew to replenish the energy he had expended in morphing and healing. Then he slipped into bed with Count Klarendes. Aodh and his spouse slept spooned together, the young wir nestled in the embrace of the man he loved.

Chapter 5. Aftermath

At their meeting the next day Merry wondered:

"So what happens next?"

"Something we won't expect, I expect." Sir Willet offered, then frowned at his own unintended play on words.

"Excuse me, Sir Willet, but bad puns are really my department." Karel joked.

Playing along with the gag Sir Willet soothed:

"That was entirely accidental on my part, my young friend, not an intentional infringement on your acknowledged prerogative as our resident jokester."

Jemsen grinned, ruffled his twin's hair, and gave their mentor a wink.

At their meeting the senior druid went around the table giving everyone a chance to state his ideas briefly, but barred criticism or discussion until each conferee had put his ideas on the table. Only then would the group critique the suggestions in the light of all the proposals.

It was an effective way to run a meeting. Unfortunately none of the participants guessed what the trolls would do next. The trolls just gave up.

The next morning, the allies saw that the trolls had worked all night to dig defensive earthworks, deep trenches which were wide and deep enough to stop a brontotheres charge. The trolls knew that the beasts could not jump the trench. In fact they couldn't jump at all. Brontotheres were too massive to get all four feet off the ground at once, the way a horse could, if only briefly, in a gallop. So a trench too wide for a brontothere to step across and too deep for it to step into and climb out of was an impassible obstacle. The trench was much more work than a flimsy wooden barrier like a cheval de frise and you couldn't take it with you if you moved, but it worked.

With the trolls having clearly abandoned their offensive and gone over to the defense, it was time for the Amazons and the brontotheres to stand down, to take a few days to resupply, to sharpen their weapons and refurbish their kit, and more generally to recoup their strength, catch up on lost sleep, and take a moment to mourn the fallen.

As herbivores the brontotheres needed down-time too, time to graze and browse and thereby replenish the energy they had expended in such prodigious amounts in maneuvers and close combat. The druids helped out by flash growing acres of high protein crops like soy beans, amaranth, and quinoa. They also grew alfalfa and nutritious grasses for the draft animals that drew the supply wagons. Plus tasty berries and fruits for the two-legged fighters.

"I didn't know that there were seeds of such crops lying dormant in the ground waiting for you to awaken them." Corwin remarked.

"They weren't till a few days ago when we sowed seeds against just such an eventuality." Merry explained. "When on expedition we druids take along a kit of starter seeds. They take less effort to grow than local seeds which we would first have to transform before flash growing them into the plants and foodstuffs we need."

The stand-down gave the trolls the opportunity to pack up during the night, break contact and retreat to the west, abandoning the laboriously excavated trenches which had served their purpose as a signal of intent to the allies. The trolls recognized that as a military barrier a trench could be flattened by earth magic invoked by druids or earth mages.

Amazon scouts followed the trolls but kept out of contact while the druids observed through the eyes of avian servitors. The Amazons sent scouts in autogyros just to observe. No bombing. The remnants of the troll invasion force traveled without much worry about the allied forces which were not in a position to constrain their retrograde movement and probably did not really want to. Having won, the allies would not put their soldiers further at risk.

"Can't we block their march by transporting the Amazon army through a portal?" Corwin Klarendes asked.

His uncle shook his head.

"It wouldn't do any good, nephew. The trolls would just circle around whatever blocking position the Amazon tried to hold. It was different when the trolls were on the offensive and deliberately attacked the trench and berm which Jemsen created. On the retreat as they are now, they have no reason to assault entrenched lines and every reason to detour around them."

The council of war decided to let the shrunken troll army withdraw. Once a numbering just over one-hundred thousand, they now mustered barely thirty thousand.

The brontotheres were at least as glad as the Amazons to see the back of them. The trolls did not only kill brontotheres; they ate them, which was an intolerable reversal of fortune for a species with no natural enemies. Brontotheres had nothing to fear from predators which is why they had always considered themselves to be at the top of the food chain.

Queen Seerah asked the druids to convey to the brontotheres their promise that the Amazon state would declare an internationally recognized protectorate over the entire region inhabited by brontotheres. As a wildlife preserve it would be closed to hunting or settlement whether by either Amazons or outsiders.

The Amazons themselves would claim only the lands along the banks of the Long River out to a distance of ten miles. They fully expected that waterway to become a major artery of commerce thanks to the new canal through the sea of reeds, which gave riverboats and barges unimpeded access to the upper basin of the great river.

The queen was concerned that once the druids left, humans would no longer be able to communicate with the brontotheres except through signs and gestures, a clumsy and imprecise process at best. What if an illness struck the herds and the brontotheres needed the help of Amazon healers and veterinarians? It was true that Healer's magic worked best on humans but it was easily up to tasks like closing wounds, preventing or clearing infections, knitting broken bones, and the like.

As a sign of their good will the Amazons were willing to build bridges to provide the brontotheres with easy passage over the many ghylls, the deep wooded ravines which criss-crossed the country. Ghylls were formidable obstacles: deeper and wider than the trenches the trolls had dug to stop the brontotheres, their bottoms were strewn with boulders and their slopes encumbered by thick timber. The dissected terrain forced the brontotheres to go miles out of their way to get where they wanted to go. But where would the beasts want the bridges built? Only through Mind Speech could they tell the Amazons.

Finally if humans and brontothere ever again had to ally against a common foe, how would they coordinate their efforts as the druids had done in this conflict?

The queen realized that the gift of Mind Speech rarely manifested in human females but it might in their new generation of human males. Under the old dispensation, the matriarchy had stunted not only the physical growth of boys but also the manifestation of their magical gifts. When the queen asked if the druids would help to train males with the talent Dahl assured her that they would. The druids promised to return in a few years to check whether any of the new boys were suitable candidates for training in Mind Speech.

Owain cautioned that even in human males Mind Speech was quite a rare talent. Some war wizards had the gift either naturally or acquired it through wizardly training. Most war wizards lacked the ability and relied instead on infrasound messaging for long distance communication though that method could not reach anywhere near as far. Mind Speech was strongest among unicorns with the druids not far behind. All druids acquired the power of Mind Speech even the elves to whom it came less easily.

Dahl promised to periodically check in with the queen via Mind Speech and to travel there through a space portal to lend assistance if necessary. Otherwise the best he could suggest was that their government try to hire a few humans with that gift. Hiring notices could be posted in the journal "Magic" published by the Institute of Wizardry and Magic. Its circulation reached the whole commonwealth.

In the future Amazon males would develop strong gifts like those wielded by their allies. Their society would more closely resemble the outer world in that respect where, in a parallel to the sexual dimorphism of their physical forms, magical gifts were apportioned differently between the genders.

Gifts useful in combat manifested almost exclusively in males. These included the ability to cast fire, lightning bolts, or ball lightning. The ranks of weather, water, air, earth wizards, and fire wizards or firecasters were almost exclusively male. That was even more true of druids and war wizards, the two orders of mages with the most flexible magical gift of all, which gave them the ability to wield many forms of magic.

By contrast the most common gifts among women were healing, a Green Thumb, the empathic sense, eidetic memory, delving, electrum sparks, calling light, and kindling fire. The last meant that they could kindle a bonfire or set the fuel in a stove alight but not actually throw flame. Some females could manifest warrior powers like firecasting, lightning bolts, or fetching though at lower power levels than males. Similarly some gifted females could sense and predict weather though not control it.

Afterwards Lady Vannsetta spoke privately with the queen.

"So my queen, you didn't tell Lord Dahlderon about your son. His son."

"No, I didn't. Let's keep quiet about that till Dahl returns in a few years to test our boy for magical gifts. Time then for the son to meet his father."

Lady Vannsetta nodded.

"I agree that that is for the best. It would be awkward admitting now how you misappropriated his seed to engender a child. And as your druid himself admits, he wants no part of fatherhood, neither the engendering nor the raising of children. Fine young man though he is, he would be a failure as a father. Better wait till your son is on the cusp of manhood himself to introduce them to each other. I expect the druids will take him and others of our most promising males into the outer world to become the sort of men the Commonwealth breeds. And let's hope that elf-boys and druids breed true."

Chapter 6. Standing Down

"Friends, General Urqaart sends us his thanks for our victory over the trolls," Dahl told his comrades, "but he won't need us for the big battles now underway in the western theater of war. As he sees it we have already done our part and then some. So he told us to stand down and go home."

That brought nods and smiles of relief from the weary group of magic wielders who, with the help of their brontothere and Amazon allies, had thrown back an invasion of the secluded homeland of the Amazons. That group included the three druids Owain, Merry, and Dahl himself plus four members of the Klarendes clan: Count Taitos Klarendes, his spouse Aodh, his son Artor, and his nephew Corwin Klarendes. The final quartet was comprised of the twins Jemsen and Karel and the war wizard Sir Willet Hanford and his aide cum war mage Axel Wilde.

"I understood from Queen Seerah that the Amazons would rather we did not hang on here for too long but leave next week after the national holiday of celebration and thanksgiving. Much as they are grateful for our help, the presence of such powerful males in their midst is disruptive to their evolving society."

"Nowhere nearly so disruptive as your first visit a dozen years ago, Dahl." Sir Willet pointed out.

"At this point, their transition from a strict matriarchy to a society of more equal status between males and females is unstoppable. Better it proceed as it has been doing in an orderly fashion. The Amazons recognize that change is inevitable and are adjusting as well and as fast as can be expected from any dominant caste. There is no doubt about their wanting to join the wider world beyond the sea of reeds which for so long isolated them from the rest of the continent."

That was a reference to the wide and deep canal Dahl, Count Klarendes, Jemsen and Karel had constructed through the impassable wetland called the sea of reeds. The new waterway would allow the passage of large riverboats and barges, thereby joining the upper basin of the river to the basin of the Amazon River proper.

"As I judge things," Dahl added, "this forced change made the Amazons admit the cruelty underlying their old social arrangements. Their old society stunted not only the bodies and the sexuality of their males but also the talents and ambitions their country so desperately needs not to mention their magical gifts."

Corwin cocked his head to concede the points Dahl had made.

"If you say so Dahl. For myself I am still too much of a kid to appreciate the big picture like that. What I can be sure of is that my work here as a soldier is over, but I still have a job to do as a war correspondent for the Capital Intelligencer. Once I dispatch my reports about our eastern campaign, I will return to Urqaart's headquarters and cover the new campaign, the final campaign as the good general calls it. This was my first deployment against the trolls while everyone else was on his second or third."

"Good luck Corwin," Jemsen said. "but Karel and I are glad to be going home."

"As for the rest of the Klarendes' clan we three will return to Elysion," Count Klarendes said. "Artor for a vacation and Aodh to get back to his job as a forest ranger and me to the estate."

"We druids will be joining you there, Taitos. The New Forest needs tending during these critical years of its growth. Once it becomes fully sentient and wakens to its powers, we can leave most of that job to the rangers."

"What about you and Axel, Sir Willet?" Corwin asked.

"Home and not before time." the war wizard said with an emphatic nod. "I may be a war wizard, but right now I am heartily sick of war or at least of this war against the trolls. Horrid creatures every single one of them. I am usually not one to demonize the enemy, but in their case I had to made an exception. I pray Urqaart wipes them out utterly. I know that's bloody minded, but there it is."

The twins nodded. "That was just the way we all felt about centaurs, especially after one of them killed our friend the elf-boy Ran. It was trying to force its way into the village school so it could kill and eat the children sheltering inside. You cannot help but hate foes who regard you as meat on the hoof in the case of the centaurs or, in the case of the trolls, beings who should be slain out of hand simply for being what they are."

"So why is Axel looking so glum this morning?" Corwin wondered.

"You would think he'd be pleased by our success. That last raid of ours was what made the trolls pack it in and give up on the invasion as a lost cause. So why the brown study? What do you think, Sir Willet?"

"It's like this, Corwin. It is true that what you boys did on that raid was as a major coup. And yes, it was the climax to our successful campaign to block the trolls' invasion of the land of the Amazons. Axel knows this as well as we do, but he is heartsick at the loss of life including his brontothere friend Lancer. And he deplores the waste of so many resources not only on this campaign but during the larger war with the trolls."

"Axel sees the whole thing as a futile and completely avoidable war. Of course the Commonwealth had to defend itself, but the trolls did not invade Valentia for ordinary reasons like territorial aggrandizement or for booty, or in reprisal for some injury. Nor did the trolls invade Valentia because of population pressure back home in their oceanic archipelago."

"No, it was all because the trolls were and still are engaged on a genocidal crusade. They weren't satisfied with abjuring magic for themselves in their own lands, which was easy enough since they have no innate magic. Instead they have sought to destroy magic everywhere by exterminating entire races simply because they had magical gifts."

Having heard their exchange, Axel looked up and said hotly:

"It's so stupid!". Shaking his head in disgust he went on to add:

"Damned religious fanatics the lot of them. Envy of those who do have magic lead them to believe that their gods hated magic so much that they had not only denied it to trolls, they were against magic entirely. Except, of course, for such magic that the gods themselves might use, if indeed they do use the natural force we call magic and not some entirely supernatural source of power. Providing such gods or any gods even exist, a dubious proposition at best."

"How could the trolls pledge themselves to gods who were too feeble on their own to stop the other races from using magic? If the gods were dead set against magic then why don't they wipe out magic themselves or the races who use magic. But no, these feeble gods call on their worshipers, mere mortals, to do what they themselves in all their divine power and majesty either cannot or will not do. Unbelievable!"

Corwin told him. "I think the hardest part for you Axel is knowing that peace is entirely out of reach even though it should be easy to achieve. If only the trolls would leave the rest of us alone, we would let them be. Not on Valentia, of course. We cannot tolerate genocide. So as things stand there is no scope for a peacemaker like yourself to broker a settlement. The trolls won't even talk with us. They can't really. Neither side speaks the other's language and the trolls won't allow Mind Speech because it is magical."

Axel nodded. Corwin was right. He was sick at heart that neither he nor anyone else could act as a peacemaker the way he and his friends had helped make peace and allies of the brontotheres in New Varangia, the Medkari in the Hot Lands, and the orcs in the Eastern Mountains and earlier of the Despotate of Dzungaria in the Far West.

In Axel's case that feeling was more acute because his style of fighting was mostly either close up and personal or at least done one kill at a time, a particularly brutal and bloody way to make war. Acting as a sniper he preferentially went for head shots, which practically guaranteed a kill rather than a shot to the body which might merely wound the target. The blast from the hydrostatic shock of the impact splashed brains and bone fragments from the back of the skull backwards and enveloped the head in a characteristic red mist, indicating success.

Acting as an assassin Axel would jumped beside a troll and slash him with the poisoned blades of his push knifes. The target's agonized screams and howls and the mess and the stench of his loosened bowels confirmed the success of his attack. Then there were the kills where Axel simply dismembered a foe, touching him lightly then jumping away with just his head or arm, leaving his torso to stagger upright for a bit with arterial blood pumping out of a severed neck or truncated shoulder.

The mess he left when he jumped a troll into the air and let him go was particularly grisly. The impact of a fall from three hundred feet left body parts and fluids strewn around the impact point. Then there was aerial bombing with incendiaries which turned enemy soldiers into "crispy critters" -- soldierly slang for burnt corpses.

There was no glory in that kind of war against enemies who were utterly merciless. Axel and Liam and Sir Willet had seen the mass graves of men, women, and children where during their invasion of Amazonia the trolls had hastily buried the victims of their war of extermination, burials motivated not by any regard for the dead but merely a public health measure to dispose of rotting corpses.

All that Axel had done in combat was necessary and fully justified, but it left him troubled. Such terrible things really should not happen in a well-ordered world. The others shared his sentiment, but of them all Axel's was the gentlest soul, so the tragedy of war affected him most keenly.

"You know, Axel," Sir Willet told his aide. "I went through the same kind of despond thirty years ago after my first war. I held nothing back attacking the barbarians with streams of flame and great clinging balls of fire. I used telekinesis to whirl a steel axe head to smash their heads and bodies and hail and lightning from thunderstorms to break their shield walls. I didn't keep count of those I slew, but the total was in the hundreds.

The fact is I really joined the army so I could learn about magic full-time and get paid for it. I did not become a soldier for martial glory. All I can tell you is that with the passage of time the horrors of war get easier to bear, not because you grow callous, but from the perspective of greater life experience."

"And Axel, one thing you should do when we get back. Look into how you can use your gifts constructively. After two tours of duty you and I are finished fighting trolls. We can look forward to a time of peace, a chance to explore the positive possibilities of our magical gifts."

"By all means talk to Drew Altair. If anyone appreciates the value of magic in civilian life it is he, in his capacity as editor of the Institute's journal `Magic'. Look how he used telekinesis in his rescue work. Fetchers also move freight along iron roads and passengers on street cars or fly autogyros. There are plenty of other examples which might inspire you."

"That's good advice. I'll do that when I get back. And thank you, Sir Willet,."

Sir Willet nodded and squeezed the boy's shoulder encouragingly. He had the highest regard for the youth who had become like a son to him, the son he had never had.

Author's Note

This story is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead.

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This story is one of an occasional series about the further adventures of the characters introduced in the fantasy novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends' and published by Nifty Archive. The chief protagonist of the novel, Dahlderon, elf-boy and druid, will appear in these stories in a supporting rather than starring role. Each story in the sequence stands on its own, with the focus on one or a few of the original characters.

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