Elf Defence (Adventures in Aguillon #2) - Lisa Henry Page 0,23

thing Benji wanted to use his bollock dagger for was to fall forward onto it and into the sweet embrace of death. Mountains were tall—fucking tall—and he’d already finished his remaining stash of gingerbread.

“We are lowland elves,” he muttered. “We are not meant for mountains! I, especially, am meant for swamps. This is bullshit!”

Calarian stopped and looked back from where he’d been springing forward and upward like a chipper mountain goat. He didn’t look like a lowland elf. He looked like a human. He was wearing those leather shorts that everyone here did, and embroidered suspenders. He even had a knapsack. Benji could see his kneecaps. It was ridiculous. Hot, but ridiculous.

“Are you okay?” Calarian asked him, when Benji spent a moment too long staring at Calarian’s leather-clad arse.

Benji wheezed. “I think I have altitude sickness.”

“Elfitude sickness,” Calarian snickered.

“That’s not fair,” Benji whined, “mocking my suffering for your own amusement. I’m dying!”

Just then, a small toddler in a bright red hood skipped past them on the track.

“Hello!” it said.

“I just... I just hallucinated a child!” Benji exclaimed, gasping for breath.

“Benji, we’re barely two hundred feet from the town wall,” Calarian said. “That child belongs to the group of people having a picnic over there.”

Benji turned to look. There were the town walls, less than two hundred feet away like Calarian had promised. And yes, there was a group of people eating cheese and pretzels a short distance away. The toddler bounced over to them, followed by an old woman with a walking stick.

“Lovely day!” one of the picnickers called.

“Isn’t it!” Calarian agreed brightly, giving a smile so sexy that it made the old woman with the walking stick blush and giggle. He really was stupidly attractive, Benji reflected, even if he had volunteered them for another stupid quest. Personally, he didn’t really care if they’d lost another duke, but Gretchen was scarily persuasive.

Benji stomped unhappily after him.

The day was bright and clear, and the breeze was brisk. Benji practiced turning his head as he walked so that his hair was swept back in interesting and dramatic ways. At first they followed the deep furrows in the path left by the lumbering mountain trolls, but then they veered off slightly northward, and crossed a mountain field dotted with bright little wildflowers that swayed on their long stems in the sunlight. A few cows wandered toward them curiously, their bells clanking.

They stopped to pet the cows, and Benji took a moment to see if he could figure out exactly what Calarian was tracking. There it was: a slight tramping down of the grass where footsteps had recently passed through. Human, because the cows left different tracks. Whether it was Lars or not though, Benji couldn’t tell.

Calarian had always been a better tracker than Benji, and Benji had gotten very rusty in the Swamp of Death. Things were ridiculously easy to track in a swamp: he’d just followed the squelching, gurgling sounds of people thrashing around in the mud and the cries of “Help! I’m lost in this swamp!” He hadn’t exactly had to keep his skills sharp.

“All of these cows look the same,” Calarian said, his brow creasing as he patted one on the velvety snout. “Why would Lars have a favourite?”

“Because he’s stupid,” Benji said. “Obviously. All humans are stupid.”

Calarian raised his eyebrows. “Not all of them are hot, though.”

Benji felt an unfamiliar twist in his stomach—too much gingerbread, probably—and reached over and snapped Calarian’s suspenders instead of answering.

“Ouch!” Calarian laughed though. He pointed at one of the cows. “If I had a favourite cow, it’d be that one. Look! That patch on its side looks like a dick.”

Benji grinned, his mood lightening as he took in Calarian’s delight. He reached out and snapped Calarian’s suspenders again, and then slid his hand down and checked exactly how tight those leather shorts were, and how perfectly they cupped his arse.

Calarian rolled his eyes, still smiling. “Come on, we’ve got a lost duke to find.”

Benji sighed. He petted the dick cow, and they continued on across the field. Dukes were stupid, and Lars was extra stupid, because he’d gone off on his own and now instead of spending the day in bed riding Calarian’s dick Benji was outside, in the sunshine, with people, and those were all things he hated. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the red-cloaked child, barely visible in the distance, playing some sort of hand-clapping game with other children. Children were stupid, which was why adults were