"I don't like it, Dahl. These dark woods are entirely too quiet. Something has spooked the denizens of the forest, and I am sure it was not merely our own passage through these glades. The local wildlife must be used to travelers passing along this track."
Dahl agreed. Like all elves, he was attuned to the rhythms of nature. Something was clearly amiss. Was it the dark force the unicorn had spoken of, or some more prosaic danger like a jaguar on the prowl or maybe bandits. He cocked his ears, listening for signs of danger.
Suddenly, a net sailed through the air and settled over the elf. The men who had flung the net yanked hard, closing it around him and dragging him to the ground. Dahl kept his head and did not give in to panic. Nor did he struggle uselessly; that would only entangle him further.
He waited till he got pulled over to two smelly villains who leered at their pretty captive. One made the mistake of putting his face too close to the net. Quicker as a snake, Dahl's right hand flicked out through an opening in the net, fingers formed into a wedge, and struck at the man's left eye.
A quick thrust and twist popped the eye right out of its socket. Howling, the man let go of the net, which let Dahl work his way free of it. He got to his feet and gave the second man a kick in the groin. The nimble elf snatched a dagger from that man's belt and plunged it into his belly.
Finally, he turned back to the first man who was bent over moaning and holding his hands to his ravaged face. One quick stab put him out of his misery.
Meanwhile, Merry was struggling against men who had thrown nooses around his neck. One of them was already dead having mistakenly supposed that a unicorn, like a horse, would instinctively pull back from a rope, pitting his muscles against the rope, but Merry was a member of an intelligent species.
He knew that ropes work with a pull but not with a push. So instead of drawing away, he ran straight at the man, who stood there dumbfounded as the rope went slack in his hands. With only a loose rope in his hand, the man found himself facing the charge of an angry unicorn.
Now, unicorns have a choice of weapons: horn, hoofs, and strong teeth. In this case, Merry plunged his horn into the man's breast and threw him sideways into two other men who were coming up in support. He sensed yet another foe behind him, trying to get ahold of the slack rope the first man had dropped and kicked out with his rear hoofs, crushing the man's ribs.
Just when it looked like he was in the clear, another assailant got a grip on the rope around his neck and tied it to a deadfall. Then, two more men threw lassoes at him from the side.
Merry blocked one loop with his horn. A second noose settled about the noble creature's neck, and the rope got pulled taut and anchored to a tree trunk. It looked bad for Merry, doubly roped and anchored as he was.
The man at the first rope had only a moment to enjoy his triumph before crying out in anguish and surprise as Dahl slipped the blade of the dagger through his ribs.
The elf then slashed the ropes, holding the unicorn. Together, they charged the remaining pair of assailants, who backed off, allowing the two to pass them by. Merry told Dahl:
"Get on my back, elf, and hold on."
Dahl did just that, grabbing fistfuls of mane, as they galloped headlong away from the scene of the ambush. The unicorn slowed to a canter briefly. Dahl did not even wait for mind speech.
He knew what his ally needed and got him free from what remained of the trailing ropes. Then they plunged into the woods, no longer worried about getting hung up.
They ran for their freedom if not for their very lives. Their attackers were slavers who normally would not kill if they did not have to, but these men had four or five of their number to avenge.
"What would they have done with us, Merry?"
"If they captured us without losing anyone, they would take us to be sold in the slave market at Xamphool. You would bring a high price as a pleasure dude in a brothel. Human men can serve for only a few brief years. You could serve for centuries. Naturally, they would sleep with you first, many times."
"And yourself?"
"The arena probably, pitted against a cave bear or maybe a rock dragon, with my horn sold afterward to an apothecary as the basis of an aphrodisiac."
"We were lucky, then. I won't pretend we got away because I am some great fighter. "
"Unlooked for wisdom in one so young. Yes, that is why you must learn to defend yourself as part of your training."
"With what weapons?"
"You did all right with your natural weapons, your hands and feet, in that fight. Those will be your weapons, your whole body, actually, and you will learn to use a quarterstaff, too, though in time, you will enlist the natural world to attack and defend."
"I used a steel blade back there too, though I did not like the feel of it in my hand."
"You did well enough thanks to surprise, but without technique or training, you would have lost a real knife fight. Anyway, blades are psychologically counter-indicated for druids. Indeed, the time will come when if you grasp steel with intent to harm another, the muscles of your hand will cramp up temporarily. That is part of the price you pay to become a druid."
The next day, they camped just beyond a talus slope near a meadow. The unicorn showed the elf the many kinds of foods a traveler may safely glean from the land: wild carrots and onions, starchy tubers, ducks' eggs, fruits and berries, the slow moving fish that live in slack-water pools, edible mushrooms and how to tell them from poisonous ones, etc.
He also cautioned him against the many plants that produce toxins in leaves, fruits, stems, and roots to discourage herbivores.
He next showed the elf how to grill, bake, or boil these foodstuffs without cooking utensils. As for lighting a fire, Merry instructed Dahl to build a teepee of dry sticks, setting it on clear ground inside a circle of rocks.
The elf was skeptical as he laid the fire since he had been told not to bother with twigs or grass or fibrous kernels for kindling.
To Dahl's surprise, when all was ready, the unicorn went to one knee and touched the wood with his horn. Flames sprang to life and burned cheerily, crackling and spitting sparks into the evening sky. It seemed fire starting was one of Merry's small magics.
Following the unicorn's instructions, the elf grilled fish on a green stick propped over the flames. For the rest of the meal, Merry had him bake tubers buried in the sand under the fire. Some days, he boiled their foodstuffs by heating rocks in the fire and rolling them into a pit filled with water.
Dahl was gratified to learn that they could feed themselves quite well without resorting to inns along the way where he would have to bargain his charms to all and sundry.
Much as he enjoyed male sex, he would rather not whore himself out day after day to all and sundry. Sex for coin struck him as a lucrative business. But he would never have the respect of folks who knew him only for a pleasure boy, one who went around with his nether regions perpetually on display as if trolling for customers.
His own dealings, discreet as they were, took place behind locked doors and velvet curtains, in chambers far removed from the rabble. There, he entertained only a handful of dignitaries, men whose appetites were as rarefied as their titles. Those, he counted as clients. And he had their respect.
The rest were friends, lovers, passing infatuations he bedded freely, without fee or shame.He was a whore, perhaps. But one with standards.
The next night, in their stall at an inn, the elf fell to his knees next to Merry's hindquarters, silently pleading for another chance to taste the unicorn's energizing gism.
The unicorn was pleased that the elf had accepted the fact that his existence would be transformed and that a unicorn's seed would be the catalyst for that change. Dahl mouthed the helmet of the equine cock while his fingers stroked it to life. It soon was hard and fully extended.
Dahl nearly swooned at the size of it. He did his best to take it into his mouth and throat, almost choking and fainting from lack of air. The second time around, the aroma of aroused unicorn was even more intoxicating than the first time.
Abruptly, Merry ordered him to stand up and to bend over a nearby saddle stand. Nervously the elf complied, trembling as the equine straddled his small body, positioning his cock atop the elf's butt.
"No, I am not going to penetrate you tonight, but I want you to feel what will soon be probing your depths."
The equine's member reached from the bottom of Dahl's butt cheeks to above his waist. Dahl both dreaded and yearned for it to be thrust into him, for Merry to take him like a filly and mount him. The unicorn knew that it was too soon for that.
Instead he thrust his cock not into the elf's crack but between the elf's thighs, rubbing it back and forth, pressing it into his genitals and belly as well. When he was ready to come he mind spoke the order for the elf to spin around and present his mouth at the cock head to receive the seed, which the elf did, swallowing greedily.