Chapter 6

Despite the chill in the air, Pardin had his sleeves rolled up and he was sweating. After hauling an empty barrel up from the basement, he rolled it out to the porch. Bucket by bucket, he filled the barrel with water until it was half-full. Taking the back of his hand axe, he spent a good hour cracking open kralberries on top of a flat rock. He added the berries to the water and then dried fettock leaves, salt, and volmint seeds. Satisfied with his pickling liquid, he loaded the barrel with various meats that his mate had salted and washed to remove all the blood from the tissue. At least she did something to help. Three separate fairies had approached him with herbs and spices to sell that "would be a wonderful addition to his curing."

"Sell me spices for my meat that you expect to eat off my plate this winter for free?" Pardin told all three. "I don't think so." Away they flew without any further comment.

After sealing the lid and man-handling the barrel so that it rested against the wall and out of the way, Pardin was approached by Fuster.

"You are not going to feed us this winter?" she said with her hands on her hips as stood on top of the barrel.

"It wasn't a 'fair trade'", Pardin said. "Either you contribute to the household or you find your own food. I remember you calling this place the caretaker's house, not the charity house."

"Fine, you can have the spices," Fuster said, "You could have explained yourself before sending us into a tizzy. Keister nearly shit all over himself."

"No, he didn't," Pardin said. "He would have enjoyed it far too much. In any case, the barrel is sealed and it's too late for your reluctant contribution."

Pardin looked around for his next chore but nothing came immediately to mind. Adray was out in the woods hunting again without him because she was ticked at him for some small slight. He wanted to toss her out on her pointy ear, which was quite sensitive to a tongue and lips. In more ways than one, she was driving him crazy.

Fuster tweaked his nose. "Are you going to feed us this winter?"

"What do you have to trade?"

Fuster flew around him a few times and then motioned for him to follow her outside. He stepped out onto the porch and then followed out into the weak sunshine. When they were about twenty paces from the cabin she stopped and faced him.

"This is a little bit against the rules and we need to step away from curious ears," Fuster said. "What I propose in trade is the power to better control over your elf. She is a whiny, little bitch, isn't she? She acts like a spoiled child far too much of the time. What do you expect from a princess?"

"I got her pledge," Pardin said trying not to look interested.

"There is an elf pledge and then there is a troll pledge, which is not subject to the loose interpretations of an elf," Fuster said.

"What do trolls have to do with this," Pardin said.

"Trolls are the romantics of the magical world," Fuster said. "They are also hell bent monogamists who believe that sex should only be for procreation. They have a literal interpretation of everything they say and what they say, they mean. You can't play semantics with a troll."

Pardin didn't know what semantics were but he caught the gist of her description. Trolls were the holy-rollers of the magical world. No wonder the stories said that everyone was afraid of trolls. However, in his particular situation of the moment, he grasped how a troll pledge might be beneficial.

"Alright, I'll bite," Pardin said. "Tell me how to get a troll pledge out of Princess Adray and I'll feed you and your fairies for the winter."

"You need to 'get some mud from the duck'", Fuster said. When Pardin gave her a look of incomprehension, she said, "You know, fish for brown trout? Take the back door boulevard?"

Pardin glowered at her. "Speak plainly for the stupid human, please."

"Fuck her up the ass," Fuster said. "When the male elf takes the third and final hole from the female, he takes her will and owns it 97% of the time."

"What happened to the other three percent," Pardin asked, knowing he was too curious for his own good.

"Premature ejaculation," Fuster said with grave seriousness. "Not that you've had that problem ... yet," she said with a wave of her hand in dismissal.

"If reaming her butt is the solution," Pardin said slowly as he tried to formulate his question, "how am I supposed to get her to submit? She has sharp claws. When I get close to touching near her butthole, but not even there, she goes screwy on me. She says, 'nope, never in my ass' every time."

"Since it's the natural way of the magical world, you should already know how," Fuster said. "I see the magic at your fingertips when you want to fuck Adray, even if she can't see it. That's your secret weapon in case you haven't figured it out yet. However, even the magic might not be strong enough to overcome a princess, which means you need a little help. For the right price, I'll sell you a guaranteed aphrodisiac guaranteed to stun an elf into submission."

Pardin chuckled at the solicitation. "What will this better-than-magic elixir cost me?"

"A dollop of human sperm, which goblins believe helps them maintain erections," Fuster said. "Goblins need great stamina or else they loose their status in the colony. Goblins pay well for this shit."

Pardin took her explanation with disbelief. "How can one little spoonful of seed be enough "love liquor" for a full grown goblin?"

"If it's any of your business, your jizz jelly is just the active ingredient in the compound and it is less than two percent," Fuster said. "On top of that, your average goblin is an inch shorter than me. The pill is no bigger than a seed of wheat."

"Oh," Pardin said, wondering where all the stories about goblins ripping out human livers and raping women came from, and why were they so wrong. "Aren't goblins dangerous?"

"Only in large colonies," Fuster said. "Of course, you wouldn't want to be around them when the magic causes a plague of impotence among them. They go crazy and slaughter anything that gets in their way, usually themselves. I heard they even ganged up on a troll in the middle of a plague and ripped out his eyeballs and tore off his ears before his mate stomped the little bastards to death."

"Oh." Pardin said. He was sorry that he had asked.

"On the other hand, goblins keep out the pests and the vermin," Fuster said. "A little bit of human goo and the goblins keep on goblinning. Hey, everybody wins and that's fair trading."

Pardin scratched his head trying to see the fault in Fuster's unorthodox scheme. The first insight he had was if human sperm made goblins hard, what ingredient made elves wet? He didn't want to ask that question. Then he realized that she hadn't given any indication of how well the aphrodisiac worked. He asked.

Fuster fumbled and fussed over the question until Pardin held up his hand. He demanded that he would use the potion first and if it worked, she could have his seed. If it didn't, the deal was off. Plainly she didn't look happy with the arrangement but she agreed and promised him that if he summoned the magic in his fingertips tonight, she would provide the potion.