Elf Defence (Adventures in Aguillon #2) - Lisa Henry Page 0,19

I speak mountain troll, obviously. I haven't got all the details yet, but it sounds like he...” Calarian paused, noting the bulge under the troll’s loincloth before continuing, satisfied that he’d guessed right. “He says there’s a monster, and he’s going home.”

“There is another clutch of trolls over the alps,” the pretzel man confirmed. “S’always been there.”

“See?” Calarian said arms folded over his chest. “It’s not an attack.”

“You’re so clever,” Lars breathed out, eyes wide with admiration, and Calarian took a moment to preen.

His self-congratulation was interrupted when the troll tapped Calarian on the shoulder, almost knocking him off his feet. “Mumhunth?” it—no, he—queried.

Calarian steadied himself with a hand on the troll’s calf and confirmed, “Mumhunth,” gesturing towards the distant break in the walls on the far side of town. “Mother,” he translated loudly for those around him. “He just wants to go home to his mum,” which drew a collective aaaw from the people gathered there.

Interspecies relations, Calarian mused, weren’t all that hard, if you just added a mum.

The troll dragged itself upright and stood there swaying, eyes fixed on the gap in the wall.

Calarian turned to the crowd and said, “You’d better clear the way, I think he’s going for broke.”

Everyone stepped back hastily, and Calarian nodded at the troll and made a go ahead gesture. The troll gave him a deep bow, and then took off for the far wall at a lumbering run. Calarian watched with bated breath, but the troll exited the town with no further mishaps, and as he disappeared from view the people started spontaneously applauding. Maybe he was getting the hang of this questing thing, Calarian thought to himself. And now that the troll problem was solved, he might even have time to take Benji to bed for a decent fuck—it had been days since the last one.

Which was when Gunther went ahead and spoiled it all.

“So, Your Grace, what do you plan to do about the monster?” he asked Lars, smiling grimly, eyes gleaming with unspoken satisfaction. “Or are you not up to the job? Because I’m sure there are plenty of people more than willing to take over ruling if this is too much for you. After all, it’s only your first week and you’ve already caused the destruction of a historic landmark.” He gestured at the fountain that was still pumping out weak spurts of water from the broken pipe in a manner reminiscent of an old man with prostate problems. “And you’ve endangered the hard-working citizens of Tournel, innocent people who were simply going about their business.” He nodded in the direction of the pretzel-cart man, who stood up straight and did his best to look like a hard working citizen, and not a dodgy operator with a borrowed cart, some hastily baked pretzels, and a nose for opportunity.

Calarian really, really wanted to push Gunther in the pond now, and possibly beat him around the head with a day-old pretzel, but Lars was looking at him wide-eyed, silently pleading for help.

So Calarian, helpless in the face of sky-blue eyes and a mountain of muscle wearing the face of an angel, opened his mouth without thinking too much about it and said, “We’ll help you hunt it down, of course.”

Lars beamed at him and Gunther scowled as Calarian tried to figure out the best way to break it to Benji that they had another quest and they were stuck here for longer now, even though he was somewhat confusingly happy about getting to spend more time with Lars.

It would probably be best to tell Benji after a really spectacular fuck, he decided. And it was ages since they’d tried the double-jointed glass-blower.

It took hours to sort out the damaged fountain, persuade the pretzel man that it still wasn’t safe to park his cart there, and to mop up the pools of water and troll sludge, but Calarian stayed, partly because he got to watch Lars’s muscles stretch and ripple as he helped with clean-up, and partly because he didn’t trust Gunther not to pull some kind of stunt to depose Lars if he wasn’t there to keep an eye on him. Calarian found himself harbouring a strong urge to protect Lars that he tried not to examine too closely.

Finally, just as the sun was setting over the jagged mountain peaks that rose up beyond the town, Calarian and Lars trudged back up the gentle slope of the street towards the castle. Their wet boots squelched against the cobblestones, and