Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2017 10:08:46 -0400 From: George Gauthier Subject: Elf-Boy?s Friends 51 Elf-Boy's Friends 51 The Western Dividing Range by George Gauthier [The further adventures of characters from the novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends'] Chapter 1 Sun Dwarves As the expedition flew southward the front range of the mountains petered out, giving way to an escarpment running northeast to southwest for what looked like two hundred miles. The escarpment marked the edge of a great plateau. From the edge of the escarpment ran a gorge with vertical sides a hundred-fifty feet high which lead back to a spectacular waterfall shaped like a crescent and measuring three hundred yards across. It was fed by the great river which collected the drainage of that whole region. From their vantage point aloft the roar of the falling waters made conversation impossible so the expedition set down a mile away to discuss what they had found. Their two earth wizards, Jemsen and the druid Dahlderon put their heads together and told the others what their magical senses had revealed. Dahl started off: "Many centuries ago the waters fell over the front edge of the escarpment, but in time the river cut its way upstream forming this gorge." "How so?" Axel wondered. Jemsen answered: "The plateau is composed of two layers of rock. The upper layer is limestone whereas the bottom layer is shale which a much softer rock. The churning water at the bottom of the falls erodes and wears away the soft shale, undercutting the hard cap-rock, which gives way in great chunks and falls into the river below forming rapids downstream. This process has been repeated countless times, eventually carving out the gorge leading to the falls." "Sightseeing is all well and good," Finn began, "but we need to overfly the plateau and see who lives there." The four autogyros rose into the air and flew two thousand feet above the ground to get an overview of the plateau. The landscape atop the plateau was mostly subtropical dry broadleaf forest whose trees were deciduous during the dry season. Such trees dropped their leaves seasonally to conserve moisture allowing more sunlight to reach the ground. That is turn promoted the growth of thick underbrush. Broadleaf evergreen trees grew on sites which got more rain or had better access to ground water. The land was thinly settled with fields and villages many strung out along rivers and streams whose waters served for irrigation, domestic purposes, and transportation. Boats and barges plied the waterways. All weather gravel roads linked the towns. Unlike the villages, the streets of the towns were laid out in regular grid with two-story townhouses which were mostly half-timbered though some were built wholly of brick. The dimensions of the houses indicated that they had been built for dwarves whose dwellings had six foot ceilings, two feet lower than the eight foot ceilings usual in dwellings occupied by humans or elves. Frost giants needed no less than ten feet of clearance though many preferred eleven foot ceilings. The streets were paved with stone blocks, the roadbeds cambered to direct rainfall to channels along the sides. Fountains fed by an aqueduct connected to a tributary of a nearby river provided clean water for the inhabitants. The expedition headed toward the largest town in sight. Just outside the built up area, downstream and downwind, were a tannery, a smithy, and a slaughterhouse. At the docks a barge carrying bricks was on its final approach, moving under the telekinetic power of a fetcher as smaller craft powered by oars or sails yielded the right of way. The fetcher was clearly strong enough to overcome the current and control the momentum of the heavy load as he laid the barge gently by the pier. The expedition set down on the outskirts. As a sign of their peaceable intentions Finn ordered everyone to keep their weapons slung or in scabbards. They all watched while the townsfolk mustered, armed with improvised weapons, merely taking up whatever was at hand: a blacksmith with a hammer, a carpenter with a wooden mallet, while others held a quarterstaff or a hatchet for chopping firewood. A disorganized crowd rather than a militia, the men did not form up in lines or collect in separate units. They held their ground and sent a delegation of three to talk with the expedition. Ifans spoke to the others. "That has got to be the most pathetic excuse for a militia I have ever seen. They're not even lined up properly, not organized into units and no leaders, and armed with only improvised weapons. Still with my empathic gift I don't sense any real hostility, just a considerable wariness about armed strangers arriving in their midst. Also they are intensely curious about our autogyros." The delegation from the town approached to within ten paces then halted. Their spokesman, a grizzled dwarf of middle years stepped forward. Finn did likewise and signaled his peaceful intentions by holding up an empty right hand. His interlocutor did the same. Finn greeted them in the common tongue which drew blank looks. Motioning the twins forward Finn asked them to translate. As dwarf-friends twice over Jemsen and Karel had made a point of learning their language. Although a dwarf-friend himself Finn's command of dwarfish was still halting. The grizzled dwarf nodded: "That is much better. I see no dwarves among you, so I am impressed that at least two of you have taken the trouble to become conversant in our tongue My name is Krekor, I am called Count Krekor, but my title is that of the chief official of a county; we have no titled nobility. This town is called Aspen; it is the county seat of Aspen County which is one of fourteen on the plateau, all under the very loose oversight of our central authorities in the capital, which is a town called Farnham's Ferry which does not belong to any county." "My name is Sir Finn Ragnarson and I am the leader of a Corps of Discovery on a peaceful mission of exploration. The war hammer I carry was a gift from a clan of dwarves who forged its steel out of meteoric iron and imbued it with earth magic making it virtually shatterproof. Instead of the usual shoulder tattoo, they inscribed the head of the hammer with the same device to show that I was a dwarf-friend." "Two others in our company are dwarf-friends. Let me introduce the famous twins Jemsen and Karel. They wear color coded sarongs to help others tell them apart. Jemsen is the one in green and his twin Karel in blue." Krekor frowned. "You said they were famous. No offense, but might I ask what for?" In answer the twins turned to show the small blue tattoos on their left shoulders which proclaimed the twins as dwarf-friends twice over. Two more tattoos showed that they were also giant-friends and elf-friends. The friendship tattoos meant that persons of all three races would automatically extend them hospitality and protection. Krekor shook his head in admiration. "Hard to better those bona fides," as Finn continued. "The twins are famous first for being the only living humans on this continent to bear friendship tattoos from three different races. Their other deeds include leading the Long March of the Frost Giants and acting as peacemakers in two wars. I am sure the twins would be happy to share with you something of their adventures. Incessant chatterboxes that they are, the problem would be getting them to stop!" A wink to the twins took any sting out of the remark. Continuing the introductions Finn added: "That cute little red-head over there is Drew Altair and the short blond boy with him is Corwin Klarendes. They are scribes and authors, and both are giant friends." Speaking in dwarfish Dahlderon introduced himself as the Druid Lord Dahlderon. "And just what is a druid?" Count Krekor asked. Axel jumped in with the answer. Dahl let Jemsen translate for Axel. "Druids are an ancient order of the most powerful magic wielders on the planet. They can invoke many sorts of magic including earth magic, life magic, healing magic, and weather magic, as well as learned magical skills like opening space portals, concealment, and levitation. As the protectors of our planet's biosphere druids are a major force for good in our world." Jemsen noted that Axel himself was an orc-friend. Krekor nodded "All very impressive." The young druid had deliberately avoided mind speech, which might be resented as a mental intrusion, as indeed it had been with the orcs. Nevertheless, he monitored Count Krekor's surface thoughts long enough to be satisfied that the man, or rather the dwarf, was not deceiving them. General Ifans gave him a nod to second the motion. The principals and the delegation sat down to a large trestle table in the public square for formal talks in full view of the populace. Krekor started off: "We call ourselves the Sun Dwarves since we live under the open sky and not in caverns as dwarves usually do. In lands closer to the equator dwarves seek the cool of underground labyrinths as a counter to the oppressive heat of the tropics. With solid physiques designed during the Galactic Empire of yore for life on high gravity planets, we don't shed body heat as well as the other races." "Understood. In the Commonwealth of the Long River most dwarves live underground though many populate our cities and towns mostly in districts constructed so as to lower indoor air temperature using ventilation via wind catchers which direct the flow of air through underground aqueducts whose waters absorb much of the heat." The first thing the locals asked about was their autogyros. Finn explained that though telekinesis or magnetism moved them forward it was the rotors and wings which lifted them into the air. Krekor told them that they were their first visitors in generations. Overland travel to the plateau was hindered by formidable geographic barriers: an impassible range of mountains to the West, rugged mountains and cliffs to the North, and the escarpment to the East and South. Isolated as they were and self-sufficient in all things, the folk of the plateau had been content to keep themselves to themselves. They had lived atop the plateau in isolation for over two centuries. They knew nothing of the Great Inland Freshwater Sea. As the Corps later was to discover the river which went over the falls did not connect to the Great Inland Freshwater Sea but flowed directly into the Southern Ocean. Also, because of the rapids its gorge was not navigable, so there was no commerce and no contact with folk downstream. Nor had the locals ever heard of the Commonwealth of the Long River. Finn explained that the Commonwealth was a vast land of peace and prosperity which occupied the South Central part of the continent of Valentia. It was a land at peace with no hostile neighbors, only friends and allies and trading partners. Its intentions were benign and pacific and the Commonwealth was entirely without territorial ambitions. The purpose of the expedition was primarily geographic discovery and exploration, and the promotion of trade with the peoples of the Western Dividing Range. Through trade the inhabitants could share in the benefits of an industrial revolution which had merged mechanical and alchemical innovation with magical powers. Their autogyros were a good example of that. Finn nodded. "I will grant that you can satisfy all your basic needs with your own resources, but the Commonwealth of the Long River can offer superior manufactures of every sort from simple things like pencils, hand tools, and farm machinery to technological wonders you have never even dreamed of including mechanical clocks, fine porcelain, pencils, printed books, refrigeration, solar stoves and ovens, autogyros, iron roads, street cars, and forms of personal transport like bicycles, tricycles, and skimmers." "The main impediments to commerce will be distance, transport, and the commodities you sun dwarves might offer in trade. Autogyros can transport light cargo, but weighty goods require trade roads, or iron roads probably connecting to a port on the Great Inland Freshwater Sea. The closest connection would be to the Northeast at the maritime republic of Brax, a city whose neighbors are the Stone Mountain Dwarves. The nearest air field lies in the land of the orcs nearly two hundred miles to the North." The locals listened with great interest as Finn described some of the technologies he had mentioned. Refrigeration was a technology which the locals could adopt for themselves. They only had to be shown how to do it. There was no need for exports to pay for manufactures as with autogyros. Guest quarters were in a meeting hall which had ceilings high enough to accommodate even a frost giant. The Corps used their own bedding. Beds built for dwarves were of no use to humans or elves much less a frost giant. Despite the friendly reception their own guards remained with the autogyros if only to keep the curious and/or mischievous kids away from their aerocraft. The next morning Finn made good on his promise about refrigeration. The evening before Dahlderon had contacted Eborn Klarendes via Mind Speech and arranged for him to travel via a space portal which the druid opened to the capital of the Commonwealth. (Axel Wilde made sure to step through the portal and back. Axel's magical gift let him teleport himself to any point he had once reached via space portal or was in line of sight.) Eborn and a crew of ice-makers stepped through rolling two ice-carts with several kits for ice-boxes and blueprints for ice-boxes, ice-carts, ice-houses, and cutting tools, plus specifications for the ponds in which firecasters would make ice. As one of his own crew translated into the dwarf tongue Eborn demonstrated how easily the pieces of an ice-box could snap together Since the local ponds were filled with weeds and fish, Jemsen used earth magic to shape a basin, filling it with water raised from the water table below. Invoking his family's gift of fire magic Eborn drew the heat out of the upper layer of the pond and dispersed it into the atmosphere. His crew drew blades across the ice to score it and cut it into cakes which they floated to the side of the pond. In practice the ice cakes would be slid up a ramp into the ice-house for storage. His family's firm Frost Giant Ice sold ice to customers who signed up for regular periodic delivery. The firm's subscription model was so lucrative they gave away the ice-boxes as a loss leader. The townsfolk resolved to adopt this technology whatever the results of talks at the capital. Chapter 2 Diplomacy The expedition took off the next morning bound for the capital at Farnham's Ferry with the dwarf Count Krekor along as their guide. He had sent a heads up to the capital via infrasound messaging. A network operated by dwarven weather wizards linked all the county seats to the capital. Weather wizardry was of little use to dwarves living underground. It was one of the rarer gifts which manifested among dwarves though rather more common among the Sun Dwarves whose prosperity depended in part on reliable weather forecasts. Still their weather wizards were week, though reliable forecasts and infrasound massaging were well within their capabilities. Eborn and his crew had been left behind at Aspen. The plan was for his refrigeration crew to spend two days training the locals at Aspen. Then Dahl would open a new portal so they could rejoin the main body of the expedition at the regional capital, Farnham's Ferry, for a repeat performance. The capital was located in the middle of the plateau. It was quite a small town, perhaps half the size of Aspen which had a population of eight thousand. Independent of any county the capital really was a ferry crossing where two major tributaries joined to form the main river which drained the plateau to ultimately fall into the gorge they had seen. With no foreign relations and no armed forces -- not even an organized militia -- there was little for the central government to do. Its assembly met briefly every two years to legislate. A high court heard appeals from the county courts. Specialized bureaus built and maintained the road network which linked the towns. It also minted coins, dredged shipping channels in the rivers, etc. With the legislature not in session, executive authority was in the hands of an executive committee of three Councilors named Zebrek, Burk, and Rokar. With Krekor to vouch for their bona fides the central authorities readily agreed to meet the principals of the expedition who were ushered into the ceremonial offices of the standing committee, an impressive chamber decorated with statuary and framed lanscapes. After introductions Finn explained the mission of the Corp of Discovery, one not only of discovery and exploration but also of diplomacy and the promotion of trade with other lands. Councillor Rokar was skeptical. "That sounds very good, and your friendship tattoos count for much as diplomatic credentials, but you must realize that we have to be cautious when our first visitors in two centuries are a party of soldiers." "It is true that some of our small party are professional soldiers, but they serve only as guards and scouts, which is in keeping with a mission of exploration and discovery into unknown lands. I myself am no soldier but a senior law enforcement officer -- one of a corps of troubleshooters for my government. This is the third time I have lead a Corps of Discovery into unknown lands. I can assure you that despite our tiny military escort this mission is a civilian operation." Finn explained that the Commonwealth of the Long River had much to offer in the way of manufactures and in technologies emerging from its ongoing industrial revolution, many of them marrying magic and the mechanical arts. One such was refrigeration, as they themselves would soon see when Eborn Klarendes and his crew arrived in Farnham's Ferry. Flight was another. Now the pilots of autogyros propelled their aerocraft with telekinesis or magnetism, but the rotors and stubby wings were what lifted them into the air. Still the Sun Dwarves could not soon produce autogyros for themselves. They had no industrial base capable of manufacturing precision parts like wire wheels, steel shafts, rotors with blades shaped like airfoils, or the steel bearings that left them rotate. But fetchers did not need autogyros to fly. They could do that on their own, despite the self-evident fact that their gift could not move their own bodies. Since Drew Altair was a fetcher, Finn called on him to explain how. "I was the very first fetcher to take flight with two different techniques. The first was lifting myself by my sandals. It's tricky, you need good balance, and it takes practice, but it is a handy way to lift yourself out of danger or to cope with a fall from a height. Although I was the first to execute this maneuver the credit for inventing it up goes to the twins Jemsen and Karel, who like me are recognized as Pioneers of Flight." "Axel Wilde was the one who realized that we fetchers could not just to levitate but could fly freely. All you have to do is strap yourself to a yolk like the ones stable grooms uses to carry buckets of water to horse troughs. More generally if you attach yourself to or grab onto anything which you can lift you can fly up, down, left, right, or sideways. Watch how easily I can fly around the room by lifting the chair I am sitting on." Suiting his actions to his words, Drew reversed his chair for better balance and lifted off, sailing slowly overhead, as the councilors murmured in awe. Zebrek smacked his fist into his hand. "Damn if that don't beat all! I'm just itching to give it a try myself, strong fetcher that I am, but not with a chair. I'll use a yoke I can strap on rather than a chair which is too easy to slip off of and fall to the ground." "Exactly right." Drew told him. "Now I myself have a short yoke built into my leather cuirass. When we take this outside I will show you how high and fast I can fly and how acrobatic I can be. Fetchers have dreamed of flight for centuries, but the key insights came from those three, Axel Wilde and Jemsen and Karel who were not themselves fetchers, which gave them an entirely different perception on the problem." "And there is another technology you Sun Dwarves could adopt on your own: street lights in your towns. A system of street lights bestows the blessings of illumination at night on the whole populace of a town. Here is how it works." Axel explained that the lamplighters who worked for his company in the capital of the Commonwealth were mostly dwarves. More than any other race dwarves had the gift of calling persistent globes of light. Lamp lighting was a part-time job. In the evening, after finishing up at their day jobs, each lamplighter walked a precise route, calling light at each lamp post, which was only a pole with a net made of non-conductive fabric which kept the globe of light from drifting away on the wind. Those hired as lamplighters could create globes that shone for at least ten hours, from dusk to dawn before fizzling out. As much as possible lamplighters were assigned routes running from near where they worked to close to where they lived. Axel's proprietorship of the lamplighter company had made him comfortably well-off. Later investments in modern industries like bicycles and pencils had made him rich. "Marvelous!" Burk exclaimed, drawing nods from the others. "We shall get right to work organizing a squad of lamplighters for our town. The majority won't have to blunder their way down the streets after dark. I commend you easterners for sharing your knowledge of these magical techniques." "Since you already have the floor, Axel," Finn remarked, "why don't you explain about pencils." Axel nodded and held a pencil upright in his hand. "What looks like a stick of wood is really a writing implement which requires no messy ink. Inside the wood is a thin cylinder of graphite which is rather like carbon black only in stick form. It leaves a dark mark on the paper and works equally well for drawing or writing text. To make corrections just rub away with a bit of bread. Unlike with a stick of charcoal it doesn't get your hands dirty when you write or draw with it. Also pencils are dirt cheap since they are mass produced by machines in a manufactory, a system which lowers unit cost far below that for goods produced with artisanal methods." "I got in on the ground floor when I took a chance on a new invention and invested in a manufactory which now turns out a million and a half of these things a year. That will give you some idea of the scale of manufacturing in the Commonwealth." Summing up, Burk remarked: "I am sure there is much we could learn from the Commonwealth. However, I am not sure our folk are ready for contact with the outer world. After two centuries isolation has become our way of life. Here on the plateau we Sun Dwarves live in safety and prosperity. Regionally we are self-sufficient in all things. We trade only among ourselves." "For instance, the clay for the bricks we use for building is found only in certain locales. From there fired bricks are shipped by barge to every town and by cart to every village. Ranches in our grasslands raise cattle which are driven to market along our road network to slaughterhouses in the towns. Their hides are then shipped up to a central tannery located on a stream which is not a tributary of our main river. Hence the effluent from the central tannery is carried away and over the escarpment and never pollutes the waters of the rivers from which we draw water." "We shall talk more of these things at dinner tonight when you will be our guests of honor. Meanwhile let's get you settled in guest quarters." As in Aspen the accommodations were plain and simple but airy and comfortable. Dinner was really about getting acquainted more than learning about the wonders the Commonwealth had to offer. They all sat around a round table which was also the one the fourteen councillors from each county sat around during their biennial legislative sessions. The menu was tasty and satisfying starting with an antipasto of cured meats and cheeses. Next came grilled rack of elk served with garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus followed by a fruit compote for desert. The dwarves quaffed mugs of beer, but the visitors chose red wine. "I take it you don't much care for beer," Rokar ventured. Finn shook his head. "On the contrary, we do like beer, very much so, but we prefer it chilled. As we Frost giants always say: 'cold beer is surely proof that the gods love us and want us to be happy'". "Cold beer?" "It flows through a hose from the keg through a box with metal tubing around the inside which is filled with ice and meltwater, to impart a delightful chill to the brew. Once you sun dwarves start using refrigeration, you should try it. You won't go back to beer at room temperature after that. Trust me." "I am game." Burk said, then added: "Now before we go any further, I have something of a confession to make. You might have asked yourselves why a people isolated for so long would offer hospitality to the first visitors in centuries rather than reject them or even drive them off. Of course we had obligations towards you from your friendship tattoos, but there was something more to it than that. You see, we knew for sure that what you told us was the truth, as you knew it, and that you were sincere about your peaceful intentions. As to how, well the fact is that I am an empath and have been monitoring your feelings the whole time." Finn nodded. "Thank you for your candor, which I must now return in kind. Your admission comes as no surprise. You did not tell us anything just now that we did not already know." "You knew?" "We knew; we all knew; everyone knew. General Ifans is himself an empath and sensed it when you employed your gift. You did not sense his since he observed only passively; he did not scan you dwarves as you did us. The druid's gift of Mind Speech allowed him to both detect your gentle probes as well as to silently communicate this news to the rest of us." "Then the joke is on us." Burk said genially. "See, I told you they were good folks." Count Krekor noted. "I cannot help wondering Sir Finn" Rokar began, "but General Ifans and Chief Borden aside you all seem so very young, a gaggle of pretty youths: an elfin druid and an auburn haired fetcher who look to be sweet sixteen, blond twins who look to be no more than nineteen while the short blond boy looks a couple of years younger. That red-headed youth with the pencil looks to be the same." "Moreover, yourself aside, none of you are physically imposing, far from the rough tough sort I would look for on an expedition of exploration and discovery into the unknown. None of them looks like he could outfight an angry tom cat." "No offense intended." "None taken. Don't be fooled by their pretty boy looks nor their slender frames or slight stature. Their ages are about twice what you might guess from their looks thanks to perpetual youth conferred on them by druidical healing or other magic. Besides the druid is an elf and Corwin is nearly as much of elven heritage as he is human. "These boys are also two to three times stronger than normal thanks to magically enhanced constitutions. The druid himself is actually four times stronger. Their speed, reflexes, and senses are similarly enhanced. So yes, physically they are more than up to the challenge. And they all have strong magical gifts, the kind that are useful in combat." "All of them have prove to be tough fighters on prior expeditions and in the crucible of war." "War, eh? Against what sort of foes, if I might ask?" "In recent decades the Commonwealth has fought several defensive wars, none of which were wars of choice. These boys' first war was against hordes of barbarians under the sway of an evil prophet with a false religion and later a life leech who sought world domination. In their second war their foes were centaurs, members of a six-limbed race who lived by the hunt and did not balk at hunting, killing, and eating sapients." "Our hardest fought war was against a genocidal race called trolls. Impelled by a crusading religion which taught that their gods hated magic and wanted it extirpated from the planet, the trolls sought to exterminate all the races on the planet which practiced magic: humans, elves, giants, orcs, and dwarves." "Didn't they use magic themselves?" "No, trolls have no magic. Natural philosophers speculate about their origins in the galactic empire of yore. Perhaps trolls were created as shock troops or mercenaries against alien races which lacked magic themselves. Trolls breed fast and are the shortest lived of all the races, which makes sense if they were bred to be disposable. As for their lack of magic either their creators thought that trolls did not need magic against foes without magic themselves or that without magic the trolls could never revolt against magically gifted masters." "Without magic and with little technology, their lives must be miserable. Imagine having only fires or candles to chase away the darkness or only muscles to lift things. Just think how laborious building houses or ships would be without telekinesis to lift heavy beams and members into place." "So this religion of theirs is basically a rationalization for their own lack of magic or perhaps born out of an envy they cannot acknowledge in their hearts." "That is a very shrewd observation, Rokar." "Anyway in the end the Commonwealth and its allies stopped them and drove their remnants back to their original homeland, an oceanic archipelago in the southern ocean." "What was your role in the great war Sir Finn?" "I too fought against the centaurs and the trolls while serving in the Fyrd, the Frost Giant militia, but I am not a regular soldier." "And do you also have warlike magic?" "I do, but in these years of peace the main use for my gift is to propel my autogyro magnetically using my control over the planetary magnetic field. Years ago I manifested quite an unusual gift which confers upon me the powers of an avatar of Thor, thunder god of the ancient Norse, the remote ancestors of the Frost Giants." Rokar shook his head. "We Sun Dwarves fight no wars. We have no army nor even an organized militia, though some of the oldest of us can remember what wars and armies and militias were like in the old days before we found refuge here." "Then you are fortunate to live in a land completely untouched by war." "Well said, Sir Finn. Uh, I have to ask how long will your visit last? We hope it is long enough to work out the means by which we will join the wider world which has so much to offer but which we have held ourselves apart from for two centuries now. " "Well, we certainly don't want to overstay our welcome. Shall we say ten days?" "Fine. And where shall you go after you finish here?" Burk asked. "We shall head South to where the Western Dividing Range meets the ocean, then directly home. In a couple of years another expedition will likely survey the northern half of the range looking for a land route through it. Rokar grew alarmed as Finn mentioned a search for a route through the mountains. "No, no, no! The very last thing you need or want is a route through the mountains. You should be glad that there is no way through them, none that we know of anyway. Thank the gods for that impenetrable barrier." "In the coast lands beyond there reigns an old fashioned and evil system of international relations with all that that implies: contending states, territorial disputes, dynastic ambitions, diplomats, armies, forced levies, mercenaries, with all the attendant bloodletting, destruction, rapine, and pillage of endless wars." "The political, economic, and social systems there combined the worst features of monarchy, feudalism, and land ownership vested in an aristocracy of the blood. Most of those who worked the land were serfs, but even sharecroppers and tenant farmers, though nominally free persons, were trapped in debt peonage. We here on the plateau are refugees from the social inequality and political and military madness in the Blood Lands, which is our name for the coastlands." "The tyrants who must still rule those lands must never learn of our existence or of the secret way under the mountains. Two centuries ago we discovered a route under the mountain range through a network of natural caverns joined to tunnels and mines we ourselves dug. One day miners broke through the last wall separating our caverns and mines from the plateau. We moved out of the chthonian depths into the sunlight and settled this land, calling ourselves the Sun Dwarves." "Since our deliverance from the Blood Lands we have not had formal relations with governments in the outer world on either side of the Western Dividing Range." "You must not give away the secret of our existence." "We won't. You have our word on that. And I can promise that we will not travel openly to the coastlands. At most we would send spies to see how things are now in that region. Perhaps there have been changes for the better." The dwarves shook their heads. "Almost certainly things are even worse. That was the trend when we left. It was why we left, the final straw, as it were. Anyway thank you for your promise not to openly reveal yourselves in the Blood Lands." Chapter 3 Alarums of War The next morning the explorers sat down to a tasty breakfast of scrambled eggs, shredded hash browns, bacon, sausage links, and toast served with the best kaffay any of them had ever tasted. "The quality derives from the perfect growing conditions on the plateau," Burk told him. "For cultivating kaffay we Sun Dwarves practice companion planting, growing kaffay bushes under the canopies of old avocado trees. You see avocado trees are easy to grow. They require little water or fertilizer and almost no maintenance since avocado trees are never pruned. Hence older trees have dense foliage, which actually decreases yield in older trees, but does provide perfect shade for kaffay bushes which grow best in dappled rather than direct sunlight." "The avocado trees also act as trellises for passion fruit vines whose mingled roots aerate the soil while the shade from their foliage conserves water. Dragon fruit trees and finger lime bushes are also interspersed among the cherimoya and avocado trees to help the other fruit crops to grow." "Our best variety of beans has a distinctive earthy scent like that of topsoil and new spring growth. Another variety has a light and fruity flavor combined with low acidity while yet a third has a hint of the taste of chocolate. We are quite the aficionados of kaffay, we Sun Dwarves are." "And there is your likeliest export to pay for manufactures from the Commonwealth." Axel told him. "Fine beans fetch premium prices in our great cities where folks not only drink kaffay at home but in cafes and restaurants. Some overly enthusiastic drinkers are kaffay snobs -- very much like wine snobs." "You Commonwealth people are amazing, Axel. You introduced us to the mechanical and magical wonders of the modern world and then showed us a way to pay for everything. I wonder too if we could export cherimoya fruit. Is there a market?" "I cannot answer that myself, but I will ask our business agent, the wily dwarf Lennart. He has helped make most of us rich." As the boys sat back and sipped their brew Burk looked on indulgently and turned to Finn and said: "Among those boys I sense friendship, comradeship, and a deep and abiding love for one another, one that is expressed physically. Am I not right. " "Indeed we are lovers, all of us: me, the twins, Corwin Klarendes, Drew Altair, and Axel, plus a naval officer, a war wizard, and a naval architect cum inventor. The naval architect is the only one of us who is not a professional adventurer of one sort or another. The nine of us live together in a residential hotel." "I take it then that you have been through a lot together." "Indeed we have. And Ifans and Borden are old friends too and comrades in arms, as is the druid. You could not ask for stouter companions." As they were eating a messenger hurried in bearing a note which he handed to the councillors. Finn caught their reaction. "Trouble?" "Oh it is trouble all right -- bad trouble," Zebrek said. "There has been a vicious attack on outlying farms in the foothills of the northern mountains. Seven marauders of evil mien bearing bows and axes ruthlessly slew all who came within reach. They killed nearly a score before they were stopped. Though our people were unarmed they overcame the killers by Calling Light to englobe their heads. A sparkler helped by flinging electrum sparks to distract them and even blinded one of them. Two of the fiends got away clean and headed back into the mountains." "I take it these marauders were not dwarves." "Correct, nor were they humans, elves, orcs, or giants. We don't know what they were. Here is the description: six feet tall, three hundred pounds, solidly built almost like us dwarves but hairy and ugly in the extreme, with a sort of facial muzzle and upward pointed tusks." Finn paled as the realization sank in. "Trolls!" he growled, unconsciously invoking his gift to cause a clap of thunder to sound to punctuate his exclamation. That caught everyone's attention. The three councillors looked transfixed. "Trolls? You mean the genocidal fiends who sought to exterminate the races which use magic?" "Yes, the very same." "Where could they have come from?" "They are likely the survivors of a great naval battle we once witnessed years ago on the Great Inland Freshwater Sea. A portion of their invasion fleet must have fled westward and made a landfall on some deserted stretch of the shore and marched toward the mountains in search of defensible ground and a place to hide. Now that they have discovered your plateau they will try to kill you all and take it from you." "And we cannot stop them! We have no army not even a militia and few weapons of war. Only the gods can save us now!" "Only they won't -- the gods, I mean. They never do. You must rely on yourself. Learn to fight or go under." General Ifans interjected. "The first step is to form an alliance with the Commonwealth and authorize us to send an army against the trolls in the northern mountains to destroy their army before it can descend on you. We likely have some time while the trolls gear up an all-out invasion. That should give the Commonwealth time to mount a campaign. In the meantime you must see to your defenses, to protect yourselves till the Commonwealth arrives in force." "But your Commonwealth is so very far away. How can they even get here. Your autogyros cannot transport an army." "Let me answer that," Dahl interjected. "The war wizards of the Commonwealth can open space portals through which an entire field army and its logistics train can march, bypassing the entire distance in between. Portals can also be used tactically to put blocking forces into place or to facilitate attacks on an enemy's rear and flanks. Now I am no military man, but General Ifans is. You should listen to him." "Thank you Lord Dahlderon. Now as I was saying, your problem is that you have no soldiers, no organization, no weapons, no leadership, no training, and no experience in armed conflict. Your population of nearly a million outnumbers the trolls, but your people are spread all over the plateau while the trolls will concentrate for their attack." "On the plus side, despite the difference in size your physical strength is about equal to theirs, and you have magical gifts useful in war: telekinesis, fire wizardry, levin bolts, electrum sparks, light globes, and especially earth magic. The infrasound network that your weather wizards operate will let you coordinate your efforts." "We in the Corps of Discovery stand ready to help. I am professional military man, and I offer you my services as your trainer. My role will mostly organizational, to muster and train your forces. Now I have only a few soldiers of my own, but the scouts are armed with a dozen air guns and a pair of swivel guns. They can be delivered via autogyro to any threatened point to stiffen your defense." "Finn Ragnarson and his friends have powerful magic gifts. Finn can both throw lightning bolts from his hammer as well as rain bolts out of the sky on an enemy force. He can counter an arrow storm to make the arrows fall short. In close combat he is unstoppable, blessed with tripled strength which makes him the strongest frost giant on the planet." "The twins are earth and air wizards. Jemsen can train your earth wizards to fight with earth magic while Karel can deflect arrow storms with a shield of hardened air. His sun mirrors can incinerate an entire regiment, while his air blades cut through anything and anyone." "Drew Altair is one of the strongest fetchers on the planet. He can teach your fetchers his trademark shadow boxing technique which helps a fetcher concentrate. He too can raise a missile shield, though his is of a different sort. Corwin Klarendes wields ball lightning against which nothing can stand. One swipe can wipe out a shield wall while his explosive technique can kill an entire squad at a time. He is also combat medic and a magical healer." "Axel Wilde can teleport himself and others and their equipment anywhere on the battlefield. He is a sniper and assassin who can take out the enemy's leaders whether from afar or close up. I will let the druid speak for himself. Dahl..." "You can count on me too. I will throw my powers onto the balance during the defensive phase of this war. After that the Commonwealth's war wizards will provide magical support to the Army's follow-up campaign to root the trolls out of their mountain hideouts." "To assist in the defense I have summoned via Mind Speech the beast master Sir Dylan of Reading to help with surveillance. Accompanying Dylan will be my nominee for commanding general of the dwarves forces, Lord Madden Sexton. With all respect to General Ifans, he has mostly served in counter-intelligence. The highest level of command he had exercised on the battlefield was over a cavalry squadron, the equivalent of an infantry battalion. Lord Sexton has led great armies to victory and is a proven battlefield commander, as Drew, Corwin, and the other can testify from their own experience." At a council of war, the councillors provided maps of the plateau for planning purposes. The maps did not depict relief with contours but only with hachures, but they did note the distance between pairs of towns and indicated which areas were farmland, which forest, and which were grasslands. Besides the towns they showed the location of logging camps and sawmills at the foot of the northern mountains. Lord Sexton and Ranger Dylan arrived later that day via space portal. A ruggedly handsome human and powerfully built much like Finn Ragnarson except on a smaller scale, Sexton stood six feet tall and weighed two-hundred fifty pounds. He looked to be no more than thirty but was nearly three decades past the three century mark. Sexton was a shapeshifter whose animal form was that of a wolverine, just about the fiercest carnivore in the forest. With tripled strength like Finn's he was as strong as a normal Frost Giant. Formidable fighter though he was, Sexton was there to offer his services as commander of the dwarven forces in the field. Dylan was a slender pretty boy with the willowy physique, dark hair, and green eyes typical of his race, the Sylvan Elves. He and the twins had been a threesome for several years. Beyond the sexual attraction Dylan and the twins were just the same sort of people. The elf-boy cum forest ranger had bonded quickly with his fellow hunters and woodsmen Jemsen and Karel. Dylan after all was an elf while the twins were elf-friends with all that implied: going around sky clad as often as possible, same gender sexual orientation, and a physical beauty beyond the norm. Dylan and Sexton had a strong though quite different bond of their own. Sexton served as a mentor and role model for the young elf whom he had come to regard as the younger brother he had never had. They had become close during the previous mission of the Corps of Discovery to the Northlands. Later they had gone to the rescue of over a hundred frost giants whose sea-going ferry had capsized. The commotion had attracted the attention a deadly sea monster, an aquatic but air breathing reptile called a mosasaur. Working together the pair had killed the monster, earning the tattoos of a giant-friend. The next day Drew flew Dahl and Axel to the four county seats of the counties bordering on the range of mountains then did the same for another five further toward the center. Axel stepped through short-lived portals at each location. Henceforth Dahl would be able to open portals to all nine towns, and Axel could teleport himself and his friends who would serve a magical shock troops. Word went out via the infrasound network for dwarves with strong magical gifts to report to their county seats. Axel jumped Drew, the twins, Corwin, and Eborn to each location to train the locals in the use of their respective gifts. The fetchers did not have time to learn to hold a missile shield which was a mental discipline as much as it was a use of an innate gift. They did have time to practice Drew's trademark shadow boxing, pile driver, and whirling shield techniques though not with military grade steel spheres. Instead they had to make do with horseshoes and other ironmongery from their local blacksmiths. One tactic they learned was to fling a double handful of ten penny nails at the faces of a squad of trolls. Masters of magnetism picked up that trick too. Drew cautioned the fetchers to be careful of fratricide during battle at close quarters. Better they concentrate on disarming the trolls by yanking their axes up and away to disarm them at the worst possible moment. Another trick was to yank the eyeballs out of their skulls. Even a very weak fetcher could keep at it for hours. Lightning casters learned to target axe heads rather than the trolls' own center of mass. That way their bolts would jump from one axe to the next and the next then down through their arms and bodies and into the ground, thereby electrocuting several at once, not just a single foe. Jemsen emphasized the importance of defensive earth works such as berms and ditches to counter the arrow storms for which troll were well known. Also the ditch in front of the berm would put assaulting trolls below the defenders more than cancelling their height advantage though not their longer reach. Among dwarves there were few air wizards, and those were too weak for the more destructive techniques like sun mirrors and air blades. Still jets of wind could disrupt arrow storms while land spouts and dust devils would discommode and disconcert enemy formations. Eborn showed the local fire wizards a bunch of tricks they had never thought of. Sure they all could shoot streams of flame and great clinging balls of fire, but those techniques were exhausting if repeated time and again. Eborn reminded them that fire wizards controlled heat as well as flame. With much less effort a fire wizard could kill a whole company of trolls by heating the air by twenty or thirty degrees to make them woozy. Some might well keel over from heat exhaustion and possibly heat stroke. All these results would make the trolls vulnerable to being finished off by dwarves with improvised weapons. As to providing weapons to the dwarves, the plan was to simply slay the enemy scouts, skirmishers, and vanguard and seize their weapons and turn them on the main body of the enemy. Now long bows were not much use to those not trained in their use, but anyone could handle a long-handled axe and shield. The vanguard of the enemy showed up ten days later. Watching through the eyes of eagles the young beast master watched as two battalions with twelve hundred trolls marched on each of the four county seats, burning the outlying villages they passed through and killing those inhabitants who had not had time to flee. The weather wizards pass the word over the infrasound network. The dwarves had fortified each town with a berm and ditch and took station behind their earthworks. The trolls tried to burn the town with fire arrows and catapults throwing incendiaries, but the troll fire wizards easily extinguished the flames. The trolls took heart from that initial small victory. Maybe they could stop these trolls after all without having to call on the heavy hitters in the Corps of Discovery. The trolls marched closer intending to take the berm by storm. That was when the dwarves' earth wizards sprang the fiendish trap devised by Jemsen. Pulling water up from the water table below they created a quagmire through which the trolls could hardly maneuver. Their heavy bodies made them sink into the mud halfway up their shins. Now the mud was not quicksand. With time and considerable effort they could extricate themselves, but the dwarves did not give them the time. Their earth magic drained away the water while their firecasters directed heat at the mud, drying it out and turning it a clay nearly as hard as concrete. The trolls were stuck, held fast. Even with their axes they could do nothing to free themselves. The firecasters also heated the air around the closer trolls weakening them with heat exhaustion then lobbed great clinging balls of flame into their midst. Other dwarves attacked the trolls who had been on the edge of their formations by Calling Light to englobe their heads and scramble their brain circuits. Meanwhile the dwarven infantry closed with the enemy formation behind improvised mantlets made from barn doors and fell upon them. The hapless trolls could only watch helplessly as the angry dwarves swarmed and overwhelmed their comrades. Armed with the trolls' own shields and axes, the dwarves repeated the process with the next ranks in. Defeating them in detail was what Lord Madden Sexton called the tactic. And it worked. The dwarves took casualties all right, but every single troll died while many wounded dwarves survived thanks to their magical healers. At one town two companies of trolls had avoided the trap and maneuvered to attack the dwarves from behind. Unfortunately for them the elf lord Dahlderon was on the scene. He stepped forward boldly, deliberately attracting their attention. Heedless of their arrow storm which Dahl countered by turning the shafts into dandelion seeds. He then gestured dramatically as if to cast a curse on the enemy while invoking his gift of life magic. The trolls stopped their attack, clutched at their bellies and howled from intense pain. Taking his cue from a facetious remark of Finn's, the druid had transformed the contents of the trolls' stomachs into spiny sea urchins. Turning to the main body of the enemy the druid blinded those in the front ranks by the dozens, doing it time and again. Yet fearsome as these tactics were, the truth was that he and the others in the Corps of Discovery were holding back, husbanding their magical strength for the main event. Behind their main attacks on the towns a squadron of troll cavalry roamed far and wide attacking hamlets and villages that had not been on their line of march. Dwarves armed with hatchets or slings or quarterstaffs were no match for the invaders. The news was passed via infrasound messaging to Sexton's headquarters. "I can handle this," Dylan told him. "but I'll need Axel to jump me there." "No problem," Axel announced. "I have all these towns staked out for direct jumps." "Fine, Dylan, just what will you do when you get there?" Sexton asked. The elf-boy shrugged. "I'll make their mounts panic and charge headlong toward drainage ditches and break their legs and necks to create an almighty awful pileup of dead and broken bodies, both equine and troll." "Sounds like a plan." Finn rumbled with approval. The thousands of troll corpses close by their towns were a heath hazard so the dwarves threw straw and hay and scrap wood over the corpses to build four huge funeral pyres. Then, when the wind was blowing from the right quarter, that is blowing toward the mountains, the dwarves set the pyres alight hoping the stink of dead troll would give the main body of their army a foretaste of the fate which awaited them. Still the dwarves knew that they desperately needed that field army from the Commonwealth. The Sun Dwarves may have proven that they were no pushovers, but defeating the enemy vanguard was one thing. A whole army of trolls was something else, perhaps even too much for the heavy hitters in the Corps of Discovery. Chapter 4 Armageddon Unfortunately the main body of the trolls arrived before the Commonwealth's field army did. The enemy numbered in the tens of thousands. Once they had fully deployed on the plateau Dylan counted the battle standards of no less than thirty regiments or sixty-thousand trolls. "Too many for the locals to handle with the tactics we have used up till now " Lord Sexton declared. "Chief Borden it is time to commit the fire power of your small force to the defense of that town closest to the enemy which the map tells me is named Mountain View. You will fly there as soon as you can." "All right, but we would be more effective if we could pick off their officers. Can anyone described their insignia?" "I can." Axel told him. "I worked as a sniper in the campaign in Amazonia." "Finn, it is time for you and your boys to throw down on the enemy with everything you've got. Dahl and Drew, I want you to counter their arrow storms. Drew have at them with your steel spheres and edged disk. Karel, too bad the sky is overcast. That means you cannot direct a sun mirror against them which is our single most powerful weapon. Dahl might clear the sky with weather magic, but I want to husband his magic for a supreme effort at a critical moment. The same thing is true for Artor's white fire." "All right. Maybe I cannot use a sun mirror today, but my air blades are also powerful whether in offense or in defense. One time when we were hunting reptilian raptors I surrounded our hunting party with a chest high rampart made with an air blade angled outwards. When the creatures charged us the blade turned their momentum against them as the animals cut themselves in two. I can do the same thing in this fight on a larger scale. Also don't forget that my shields of hardened air can fend off an arrow storm even more easily than a fetcher's missile shield can." "Good points. Finn and Corwin, do your best with your lightnings. If they get close, the earth wizards will fix their front ranks in place as before to make it easy for you Finn to wade in and bash away with Mjolnir. Eborn, shoot flame and throw clinging balls of fire but save your white fire for contingencies. We likely will need it at the critical moment upon which many battles turn." Just then a light tenor voice piped up from the doorway. "That sound like as good a plan as any, but I can offer something better." "Eike!" The twins exclaimed. "What are you doing here?" "I have come to save the day." Eike declaimed dramatically, playfully striking a heroic pose, then added: "Pardon the theatrics, but this my chance to finally play the hero. It's always you guys who have exciting adventures which I can only hear about second hand." "Just how are you going to save the day, Eike" Lord Sexton asked. "Have you come up with another wonder weapon?" "I have indeed. Just recently I figured out a way to destroy a whole army in one fell swoop, that is if the weather conditions are right. It has been field tested at the proving grounds, but this would be its first application in actual combat. I could explain, but that would spoil the surprise. General Sexton, please don't engage the enemy for the rest of the morning while we make our preparations." "We?" "I meant me and a small air force which has been put at my disposition plus the war wizard Sir Willet Hanford. With Dahl acting as an anchor to this location which Sir Willet himself had never been to before they jointly opened a space portal for a squadron of cargo autogyros from the Army Air Corps whose aerocraft will drop my wonder weapon on the enemy and destroy them utterly." "This I have to see." Karl-Eike Thyssen was no one's idea of a soldier. Short, slightly built, slender, and smooth muscled he looked to be no more than sixteen and would stay that way for centuries thanks to druidical healing magic. Far prettier than any boy rightly ought to be, Eike had a flawless complexion and fine boned features including a broad brow that hinted at his intellect, high cheekbones, a straight nose, plus subtly pointed ears and chin which gave him an elfin appearance, His large green eyes were set wide apart under finely arched brows, their lashes too long to have ever have been meant for a male. Eike was a civilian, a naval architect in fact, but he was also the most prolific inventor in the Commonwealth. It was he who had invented the autogyros and air guns and magnetic cannon, and even the bicycles to transport the Army's dragoons which had contributed so much to victory in the war against the trolls and provided personal transportation to millions. Now he had come up with something new. "You all shall see and very soon, I promise. Again pardon my theatrics, but this will be so spectacular that you will be gratified afterwards it came as a surprise." Sexton nodded. "I may be the general around here but you are a master of warfare in your own way. We will give your wonder weapon a chance." Within two hours all the principals and Eike and his bombers, as he called his aerocraft, were stationed just outside Mountain View watching the approaching enemy. The troll army which was made up almost entirely made up of infantry marched in three columns, the center one on the wide graveled road leading to the town the others flanking it through the brush. Councilor Burk asked: "Why do they march as though on parade, drummers beating a cadence, everyone marching in step, and in geometrically precise ranks and files?" "Don't think that is only for show or merely to intimidate you. An army marches in step for sound tactical reasons." Sexton told him. "A marching formation is more compact with minimal distance between soldiers left and right and front to back. With regular, ordered and synchronized walking it takes less time for a thousand soldiers to pass any given point than if they were strung out in route step order as we call it. Marching in formation facilitates maneuvers like deployment from column of march to line of battle as the head of each column splits and pivots left and right to link up with the columns on either side." "Properly drilled troops can change direction in the blink of an eye. For instance, with the command 'Right flank...MARCH' every soldier in a column pivots to the right instantly transforming the files into ranks and the ranks into files which allows the column to advance in line of battle at right angles to the former line of march. Same thing for the command 'To the rear...MARCH' which instantly reverses the direction of march. Marching in formation lets bodies of trained soldiers run rings around ill-trained levies." "Make no mistake. This is no disorganized barbarian horde which you confront. You are facing an army of well-trained soldiers." The trolls demonstrated just how well-trained they were as they flawlessly deployed from march order into an attack formation with companies of soldiers staggered checkerboard fashion rather than as a solid line or mass. Companies marched in rectangles a dozen files wide and as many deep, pressed shoulder to shoulder. Those on the outside of the formation locked shields held vertically while those in the middle raised them over their heads and the whole company advanced in step as if on parade, looking like a cross between an armored tortoise and a centipede if such a thing could be imagined. The idea was the shields would protect the trolls from missiles long enough to close with the dwarves and hack at them with their axes. Lead bullets slung by defending slingers would bounce harmlessly off the interlocked shields. Even horseshoes propelled telekinetically or magnetically might skitter off at an angle. Then after the trolls reached the enemy and their foes occupied the empty squares, they would come under attack from both flanks as well as the front. The troll commander and his staff had stationed themselves in an empty square just behind the front lines. They were all mounted the better to see and control their army. In full druidical robes the elf-lord Dahlderon stepped forward then levitated via gravitational repulsion to a height of a hundred feet. He broadcast via Mind Speech. The troll commander answered with a mental shout. The druid pointed at the commander who slumped in the saddle as, within his skin, his bones crumbled to powder. The troll commander hardly had time to realize that death had claimed him as his flaccid body fell off his horse and onto the ground. What was left was an unrecognizable bag of flesh and organs and leaking bodily fluids intermixed with clothing and weapons and armor. Even battle hardened as they were the trolls blanched and recoiled in horror. As for the druid, Dahl was heartily sick of witnessing death and destruction of sapients first at the hands of the eastern barbarians, then the centaurs, and worst of all the trolls. The barbarians had been greedy and callous but still recognizably human. The centaurs were utterly inhuman. Indeed they regarded all the races descended from Old Urth as so much livestock. The trolls were the worst of the lot, religious fanatics intent on exterminating the other races root and branch, all the while feeling self-righteous and telling themselves that this was what their gods demanded of them. Turning to his friends, Dahl told them. "We have no choice now but to kill every one of them, though I am afraid that without our field army, it won't be easy. Still I am confident that even this huge host is no match for our concerted powers." "Huge host or no, they will soon be an army of dead soldiers, if I have anything to say about it." Eike said with quiet determination. "The weather is perfect for my wonder weapon. No wind; the air is practically still. That will aid our attack. Now watch." When the center of the enemy formation was less than two miles away, Eike's air force took off and made its attack run, repeatedly flying over the enemy formation while dropping a white power on the trolls. The powder did not disperse horizontally, contained as it was within invisible walls and later a ceiling of slightly hardened air, the handiwork of an air wizard aboard one of the aerocraft. Soon the enemy was engulfed in a cloud of suspended particles though to no effect visible to the defenders in Mountain View who were watching through far-viewers. "That white powder of yours is not working, Eike. As far as I can tell it has had absolutely no effect on the trolls." Sexton pointed out. "That powder is not a poison, if that is what you were thinking, Sir. It is flour, ordinary flour such as you might find in any kitchen or bakery. Now watch what happens next. The trailing aircraft have reached a safe distance and will now launch three small missiles into the cloud. They have streamers attached so we can spot them from here." Propelled telekinetically by the pilots of the trailing bombers the streamers disappeared into the cloud easily penetrating the flimsy wall of slightly hardened air. The containment box dissipated an instant before the incendiary devices went off and unleashed a conflagration the likes of which no one had ever witnessed before. Once the particles of flour were ignited the flames propagated through the cloud so fast as to create a hugely destructive blast and firestorm. Even from a distance of nearly two miles the flash was bright enough to hurt the eyes. The report of the explosion arrived within seconds. It was easily the loudest sound anyone had ever heard short of a landslide or a volcanic eruption. Good thing Eike had warned everyone to put hands over their ears. The smoke and dust and ash cleared to reveal a scene of utter devastation. The enemy host lay dead, their bodies torn, mangled, crushed, and incinerated, transformed into what soldier slang chillingly called crispy critters. "I stand in awe of you, Eike. And that is not something I ever said to anyone in more than three centuries." [What Eike had invented was a fuel-air explosive, an intentionally ignited dust explosion such as can occur by accident in grain elevators, flour mills, corn mills, and coal mines. Modern thermobaric bombs use droplets of fuel instead of dust, but it is the same phenomenon.] [Since the weapons are almost one-hundred percent fuel, they are significantly more energetic than conventional explosives of the same weight. They generate an intense, high-temperature explosion with a blast wave which lasts longer than that produced by conventional military explosives. Against field fortifications such as foxholes, tunnels, bunkers, and caves they are particularly destructive partly due to the sustained blast wave, and partly because they consume the available oxygen and asphyxiate any troops inside the fortifications who survive the blast.] Eike needed no encouragement as he animatedly explained how his fuel-air bomb worked. There was a lot more to it than what they had seen. For instance, the aerocraft took in a stream of air through a scoop in the belly into a chamber where whiling blades mixed it thoroughly with the flour then blew it down and away. Also the density of the cloud was of critical importance -- something which the air wizard could control by expanding or contracting the box. It took a lot of training and practice for an air wizard to sense when conditions were exactly right. Ifans told Eike that he would personally recommended him for a top military decoration. His bomb had avoided a set piece battle the dwarves could not have won by themselves and perhaps not even with the magic of the heavy hitters from the Corps of Discovery. Had the trolls won, their army would have had several days to rampage over that sector of the plateau before the arrival of the Commonwealth field army. The dwarves were ecstatic that Eike had saved them and removed the threat to their way of life. That afternoon they made him a dwarf-friend. The Commonwealth field army arrived four days later and established a base from which to launch their offensive to root out the remaining trolls from the mountains. That was a job for the professional military, not the Corps of Discovery. Finn realized that anything that the Corps of Discover might still accomplish would be anticlimactic and declared its job to be done, the mission over. Except for Dahlderon they would all return home to the Capital. The young druid himself would return to Elysion and the New Forest and to his lovers Owain and Merry. "That's fine with us journalists," Corwin told him. "Drew and I need to write our final articles for the Capital Intelligencer describing the campaign and then get started on a book about our many discoveries and adventures over the last months. As co-authors we will both be eligible to win next year's Writers' Prize." Finn and General Ifans agreed that Ifans and the scouts and their transport aerocraft would remain on the Plateau for a time to organize and train the dwarven militia. Their victories over the enemy vanguard had instilled confidence and pride in them and a resolve to never again leave themselves defenseless no matter how secure they felt themselves to be in their isolation. In the immediate future all they might have to deal with would be troll stragglers, but decades down the line who knew what threats might present themselves. The scouts were pleased at the prospect of easy duty in garrison. For a change they would have snug quarters out of the weather, hot meals, and maybe even cold beer if the dwarf artisans could build chill boxes soon enough. The elfin scout Evan and his boyfriend, the human Hugh Loring would continue their romance, perhaps indefinitely. General Ifans and Chief Borden had endorsed their applications to transfer to the same unit upon their eventual return to the Commonwealth. Ifans acknowledged that for now the dwarves would not need modern air guns for defense. Instead they would be armed with war axes and shields, both those they had themselves taken from their foes and those the Commonwealth would supply from its stores of captured weapons. Lord Madden Sexton was relieved to be able to give up his command of the dwarven forces and return to his day job as a forest ranger though not before the grateful dwarves made him too a dwarf-friend. Dylan however would stay on, serving with the Army. His powers as a beast master would prove invaluable in finding and tracking down the trolls still lurking in the mountains and in detecting enemy ambushes. Also staying on for a spell were Sir Willet, now reunited with his aide Axel Wilde, plus Eike and his little air force. Eike explained why. "I have another wonder weapon to try out under battle conditions." Reaching into a pocket he drew out a metallic object a bit less than two inches long and half an inch thick. It was shaped like a pointy tear drop with tiny fins crimped onto the back end. "I call this weapon Steel Rain since we drop these things in great numbers from high above. The fins stabilize their fall as gravity accelerates them to a speed of three hundred miles per hour. You can image how much momentum such speed imparts. It's enough to produce a sure kill as its impetus drives it deep into and sometimes straight through the body." "Steel Rain is an area weapon which is effective not only against troops in the open but against enemy formations under the forest canopy whose presence our military delvers could sense. This is what we would have used against the trolls the other day if it had been windy. I have great expectations for this new weapon." "Like my flour bomb Steel Rain is dirt cheap. It is be dropped by bombers from simpler bins than those used to drop flour. And no air wizard is needed. Also aviators in the Army Air Corps providing troops with close ground support now have something else to drop from those flying yokes of theirs besides incendiaries and caltrops. Even fetchers with the ground forces can deliver Steel Rain by the bucketful." "Incidentally, I got the idea for Steel Rain from those double pointed dowel nails which Sir Willet employs in an anti-personnel role. It occurred to me one day that gravity could accelerate steel just as effectively as telekinesis or magnetism. As his aide you keep Sir Willet supplied with dowel nails, don't you Axel?" "Indeed I do. Two full boxes are part of the kit I carry for him plus my own gear which includes the same stuff as any wizard's aide plus my combat medic pack and an airgun with a telescope sight and both supersonic and subsonic ammo for when I am operating as a sniper not to mention the fist knives with poisoned blades which I use for when I am operating as an assassin." Looking over pointedly at his boss and mentor, Axel went on to say. "I hope you haven't put the notion in Sir Willet's head that he should add the burden of a couple of hundred of those things to my kit. Remember I am just a little guy." "A little guy with twice normal strength and stamina thanks to druidical healing magic." Sir Willet pointed out with a warm smile for the boy who had become like the son he never had. "No need for you to carry them with you, Axel. We'll store buckets of them at the institute. If the tactical situation calls for dropping Steel Rain you can teleport to our storehouse then return to the battlefield and deliver your load from a thousand feet up in the air." War mage though Axel was in his own right, that was his second job. Axel Wilde's first job was as Sir Willet's aide. At least the Army was fair about paying him two salaries -- not that he really needed the money, independently wealthy as he now was. It was the principle of the thing. "Once we have demonstrated the worth of Steel Rain," Eike began, "I will rejoin you guys in the capital. It's been lonely with all my boyfriends away on missions to the Western Dividing Range or the Southern Ocean. Besides I miss my old haunts and my creature comforts." "As I have said before, I am no adventurer. I was relieved that the enemy never got to close quarters the other day. I fight battles with my smarts rather than physically, and I would like to apply those smarts to projects which I had to put on hold after I got the brainstorm which produced the fuel air bomb and Steel Rain." Madden Sexton clamped the young inventor on the shoulder. "Karl-Eike Thyssen, with all your inventions both civilian and military, you have got to be the single most valuable citizen of the Commonwealth of the Long River." "Hear, hear," the others chorused. Author's Note If you have enjoyed this story and others like it, consider making a donation to the Nifty Archive. They take credit cards. Point your browser to http://donate.nifty.org/donate.htm This story is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead. It is one of an occasional series about the further adventures of the characters introduced in the fantasy novel 'Elf-Boy and Friends' and published by Nifty Archive. The chief protagonist of the novel, Dahlderon, elf-boy and druid, appears in these stories in a supporting rather than starring role. Each story in the sequence focuses on one or a few of the large cast of characters in the ongoing saga which now exceeds Tolstoy's War and Peace in word count, if in no other measure. Readers who like these stories might want to try my two series 'Daphne Boy' and 'Naked Prey' in the Gay/Historical section of the Archive. My 'Jungle Boy' series of Hollywood tales is posted in the Gay/Authoritarian section. The series 'Andrew Jackson High' relates the trials and tribulations of five of its gay students. For links to these and other stories, look on the list of Prolific Authors on the Archive.