Dahl admitted that he had used his brother's shepherd's crook against wild dogs the previous spring when a pack came over the mountains to the north and ranged over the land seeking the spring lambs and kids.
In the crisis, he had been pressed into service, though he did not normally tend livestock. Balan nodded, then chose a sapling and cut it down with a sweep of his long blade, then trimmed it clean. Brandishing his blade, he remarked.
"Forged with magic by the Stone Mountain dwarves, so it never needs sharpening." he told Dahl.
He then took up his staff and sparred with Dahl. They made quite a sight, the giant clad in just his trews, massive chest and arms bared, facing off against a diminutive nude elf.
Dahl's pretty features screwed up in concentration as he pitted himself against the experienced warrior. The older male had the advantage of strength and reach and training, not to mention centuries of experience.
Though Dahl did not have the hardened muscles of the warrior, he was healthy and fit, and his size made him quick and nimble. Even so, his every strike was easily countered by the smooth moves of his opponent.
The elf came off much the worse with bruises, rapped knuckles, and a sore elbow that left his left arm numb for a brief while. Still, the giant pronounced himself satisfied with Dahl's skills. He had shown he was no expert, but he wouldn't trip over the staff either.
That night, the giant invited Dahl to his bed but contented himself with mere bodily contact as they lay spooned together with only the thin fabric of his trews between his groin and the elf's rump.
He did not ask Dahl to give himself to him but merely threw an arm around him protectively rather than possessively, stroking his chest lazily with his fingers and nuzzling the nape of his neck before they both fell asleep.
Dahl was grateful that the man was treating him as a friend and an ally and a traveling companion rather than just a pretty man toy, though he would be within his rights to do just that. Instead, the giant had sparred with him, warned them of danger from the Trackers, and helped prepare their simple supper.
Now he was lying there with him companionably that they might gather their strength to face the perils that lay beyond the elven wards. Dahl had to admit that he felt quite comfortable in the giant's arms, though he hoped for a proper shag on the morrow. A giant mounting an elf. He grew hard just thinking about it.
The next morning, as they left the warded area, the giant handed the elf his own quarter staff, saying he would rely on his sword in any confrontation.
"I use the quarterstaff mostly as a hiking pole rather than as a combat weapon. It makes a good prop going uphill and a brake heading downhill and lets you test streams and swamps for depth, mud pits, and quicksand. You will find it handy clearing spider webs, too.
"It makes sense to carry a stick since no one travels brandishing blades. You keep them in a scabbard or sheath or hung from your belt, but a staff is always in your hands while you are on the move, so it is your first defense against sudden attack by wild animals or anything else."
Indeed, with its long reach, the giant's quarterstaff was a formidable weapon in its own right. Made of hickory, the iron bands at the ends were inlaid with rings of silver.
The staff would not kill a Tracker, but it could stun it and the silver burn it, keeping it at bay long enough for the steel of Balan's sword or the horns or hoofs of the unicorn to end its unholy existence.
Unfortunately for the trio, their forward progress that day was dogged by bad luck. Streams swollen by heavy rains upstream forced them to detour to fords far above the normal crossing, lengthening their route.
Then mucky ground slowed all of them, especially the unicorn with his hooves and the giant with all that weight on only two feet. So they did not make it safely to the next town.
Twilight found them in a piney woods, dimly lit and eerily quiet from the way the trees and the carpet of needles absorbed the sounds of their passing.
With nothing for it, the trio looked for a defensible spot to make camp. Now, a pine forest has very little understory in it, letting them spot a clearing a ways ahead.
There a defile split the rocks, steep sides rising all around to twice the height of a man. At the end of the defile was a flat space large enough to make camp. Indeed, they found a camp there already set up, but no one was around.
Suddenly, a nervous young voice shouted down at them.
"Drop your weapons and hold out your hands where we can see them!"
They looked up into the anxious faces and drawn bows of two young humans, who looked so much alike they must be twins. Both were as nude as the elf.
Though of no more than medium height, they carried themselves so well they might be princes of the forest, lithe and manly handsome and very blond. With the hair on their heads cropped short (though a blond elf was hard to imagine), their slight builds and slender physiques, and their youthful features, the twins might be taken for elves themselves.
Both were as naked as any youth of the elven race. The young men's comeliness would normally have piqued Dahl's interest, but the arrows pointed at him were all business. Dahl recognized the shafts as genuine war arrows with wicked barbs, not the usual broad-head hunting arrows.
"Merry, beware of archers!" He called back.
His shout was just in time before the unicorn joined them in the kill zone of the ambush. There was little the unicorn might do just then against bowmen perched on the rocks, but as long Merry remained at liberty, he might effect a rescue later.
Catching a glimpse of the retreating unicorn, the young men lowered their bows, though they kept their arrows strung.
"Welcome strangers. Your friend, the unicorn, is an earnest of your good intentions. I am Jemsen, and this is Karel, my twin brother. Now, who are you? and what were you doing sneaking up on our camp just now."
"We are honest travelers seeking a refuge for the night." the giant assured them. "We come in peace."
"Then in peace, we greet you."
The young men scrambled down the face of the rocks, landing lightly on their feet at the bottom, their slender but strong legs easily absorbing the impact. As they stood before the two elves, Merry joined them, having heard their words of amity.
The two lads could not have been over twenty-three, though clearly at the end of their growth spurt as evidenced by their well-defined wiry musculature.
Jemsen and Karel were so much alike it was hard to tell one from the other. Likely, the young men had played on that growing up, the sort of harmless mischief that twins so often get up too. Still, it seemed that to Balan and Merry that Jemsen was the one in charge.
They explained their own presence in those woods. The brothers were local hunters who had gone far into the woods that day following the trail of a wounded elk they had shot.
"I hope that by now it has bled out and is at peace. I just hate for a wounded creature to suffer. We hunt the forest creatures for their meat and their hides to cure for leather, but we always try for a clean kill."
"Nothing dishonors a hunter more than the lingering death of an animal. We are ashamed that our quarry has suffered hours of pain and fear." added Jemsen. "If only that twig had not deflected my kill shot, my arrow would have found its heart, sparing the poor beast this agony."
"Well, spoken, lads." Balan remarked, "But why are you running around bare ass like young Dahl? And I could not help noticing your glabrous skin -- not a feather on either of you anywhere, not even at the fork of your legs?"
For answer, they turned to display small tattoos on their left shoulders, marking them as elf-friends. Two years earlier, when they were only twenty-one, the twins had chanced upon a pair of elves under attack from slavers.
Taking the evil doers completely by surprise, they skewered four with their arrows before the miscreants realized the threat from their rear. Together, the impromptu alliance of elves and humans had finished off the slavers, including a fearsome orc, an ugly brute with four inch tusks jutting up out of his lower jaw.
After binding their wounds, the young humans tended the two elves until they recovered enough to travel to their home village where the twins were welcomed as heroes.
Inducted into the tribe as elf-friends, the brothers had spent the rest of that spring and summer with the elves, living as any elf would, going about entirely naked.