The Chronicles of Harold the Healer Ch. 04

No matter how hard she tried, a particular kind of rain would always bring back memories to Dana Magnussen, so far away now in time and space, yet accessible in an instant. Raindrops had pattered and spattered on the Wards of the Mages as they had charged in arrow formation towards the lines of the waiting forces of the Yellow Autarch of Carcosa. Civilized people did not fight in the rain, and they had almost been caught by surprise when they saw our lines forming up and preparing. Our horses were far more eager for the fight than their riders and the Mages could all feel their excitement. We had been shown how to hold our lances, which had been to disguise who we really were, and our Wards had been set to overlap so that they formed an arrowhead ahead of us. Connie, the Warrior, was of course at the point, just as ready to fight with sword and spells as the horses had been. Three of the Healers were on either side, with one Engineer for each to anchor. Harold and she had been on the right side, with him next to her. The rain, which had been falling lightly up to this point, began in earnest just as the trumpets blared, the infantry started banging on their shields with their swords and yelling, and the charge began.

Only an hour before, she had pulled his naked body onto hers in her tent. He had taken his time, kissing and licking his way up her belly, balanced on his right hand while his left had been gently stroking her pussy and rubbing her clitoris, then paying his respects to her breasts, giving her nipples gentle licks and a few sparks that shot directly to her brain and inflamed her even more.

"You do the same things to me every time and I still get turned on," she had whispered as he'd finally settled on her and held her head between his strong, calloused hands.

"It's something about the power of love," he had replied quietly, brushing her lips with his. "I think I'll stay here like this and enjoy the quiet intimacy of it."

"I don't think so, bub," she had replied, reaching down to grab his hot, hard cock and putting it at the entrance of her vagina. "That cock is going inside me and isn't coming out until it has delivered its load of hot, yummy cum. Oh!" He had thrust all the way into her in one push.

"You are so demanding," he had said, gently thrusting in and out as their bodies moved in the old familiar rhythm. "Maybe this will soften you up." His eyes, an odd shade of blue with hints of green that people always said reminded them of the ocean, had lost focus and she had felt little sparks tickling her already aroused clitoris, provoking an involuntary moan.

"I feel something that isn't getting softer," she had gasped in reply, squeezing him hard and feeling every bump and ridge on that wonderful cock of his. She found enough concentration to start sending a few sparks into it, making his body shake a bit and him groan quietly.

"I'm going to bring you first," he had said somewhat defiantly, pumping harder and faster, overloading her brain and sending her body stampeding towards orgasm, but he was already pulsing and then delivered several squirts of cum that had filled her up. "Oh, Dana, you've taken my cum again," he had said as they enjoyed the afterglow. "How much is too much?"

"I think that I have a fifty-gallon limit," she had replied, rolling him off, making his softening organ pop out of her with one last rub against her clitoris. "I think that we have a battle to prepare for."

"Maybe if we refused to get dressed, they wouldn't let us," he had said hopefully as they had Cleaned their fluid-saturated genitals.

"Hopper and Malone would put us on horses at sword-point, regardless of our state of dress," she had replied, "and I have no desire to do a Lady Godiva ride straight at a line of unfriendly Carcosans waving sharp and pointy things at me." She had stood up and hauled him to his feet and into her arms.

"But think of the distraction factor. Everyone's eyes would be on those magnificent bouncing breasts and flowing blonde hair of yours and they'd totally forget about the rest of us," he had said between hot, gentle kisses.

"Moser! Magnussen! If you two have finished fucking each other's brains out, we would like the pleasure of your company at the mustering area in ten minutes!" bellowed Major Hopper's all-too-familiar and unwelcome voice from outside the tent.

"Yes, master. Whatever you say, master," Harold had replied in a patently fake servile voice, making her laugh and him growl something unprintable as he'd moved off to hassle the other Mages in similar situations. As adjunct members of the Army, they weren't subject to the full range of discipline that the military could level at them, but Hopper and Malone had had their own creative and evil ways of making their displeasure known.

"After this is over, we will celebrate," she had said as they had started dressing. But as things had turned out, they had never had another opportunity to have sex. A jolt from a bump in the road caused her to awaken from her doze and look around. Her eyes focused on Mary and Charlie, who had been married long before Carcosa and were still married now. They had also apparently been woken up.

"By any chance, were you two ever Drill Instructors way back when the world was a lot younger?" she asked. They looked at each other and grinned.

"What makes you think that, after all these years?" Mary replied in her mid-range voice that had been made husky by years of shouting at unfortunate subordinates, trying to look innocent. Innocence was not a natural expression for her wrinkled, foxy-looking face, with its pointed chin, sharp green eyes, thin lips on a relatively wide mouth, and bushy eyebrows that had once been black, but now were silver.

"A few years ago, I bumped into Kate Selwin, one of the other Healers, in the Capitol, and she said that she'd had to Heal up some recruits who complained about some of the antics of their DI, which sounded just as evil and manipulative as yours were." They both laughed, startling Lakash Moto, the head of the local chapter of the Order of St. Thrimble, who had been picked up in Havisham on their way, to wakefulness.

"We may have spent a few years in the position," Charlie replied in his deep, gravelly voice. He had a fringe of gray hair around a shiny dome of a head, brown eyes that still had the power to strike terror into those upon whom they gazed, a hatchet-like nose, bushy gray eyebrows, and a neatly-trimmed mustache over a generous but thin-lipped mouth. "After a while, we decided that we needed to up our game and terrorize more than groups of new recruits. You guys were a real challenge because we had little real power over you, and you were experienced, very smart, and of course had Magic to aid in your various mischiefs."

"Speaking of which," said Mary as Lakash watched them with interest, "how did you manage to make the horses' farts sound like they were laughing at us? Moser must have had something to do with it because he was the veterinarian of you lot." Dana grinned back at them.

"Fred Tomlinson, the other Engineer," she added for Lakash's benefit, "had experience with acoustic as well as civil engineering, as you know when you had him amplify Harold's singing to terrify the enemy's horses in the latter half of the battle."

"Harold has a nice voice," said Lakash in his quiet, mellow voice. Though not nearly as large as the other three, he had a warm, calming presence that was part of his Healer talents and was also of great benefit as an administrator. "I have never heard him sing, but then again we've never been in a place where he would want to."

"He seems to have been one of the few people in the world born without a shred of musical ability," said Dana. "I found out the hard way, as did the people on the battlefield and in the karaoke bar in the Capital that I and my friends dragged him and his friends to. He had refused to participate and had seemed to take no interest in what was going on, and it took extreme threats from seven people to get him up on the stage. The March to Battle Song is very simple, as you know, but he couldn't stay on key, got the tempo wrong, and there were some weird harmonics in his voice that got everyone on edge. When he had finished, the place was dead silent. 'I told you,' was all that he said as he took a sarcastic bow and walked out the door."

"You were saying about Fred," said Charlie, as undistractable as ever.

"Fred's skill of acoustic manipulation transformed the farts into laughter. Harold fed the horses a few things that made them gassier than usual. That was one parade that the regiment will never forget."

"Especially since horses tend to start bucking after a few too many farts," said Mary as Lakash started giggling helplessly. "Bucking horses firing gas-propelled turds and sounding like they were laughing maniacally created a near riot in the Capital's Parade Ground the day before we were set to board the ships to take us to Carcosa, as everyone tried to take cover from turds and also trying to avoid getting their heads kicked off. Fortunately, the effect only lasted for half an hour and order was eventually restored."

"We shall not discuss the revenge they wrought upon us," said Dana grimly, "save that we learned very quickly to test our food and drink for various unwanted contaminants." Lakash's thin eyebrows rose.

"Doing that would get you arrested and charged," he said, giving the offenders a frown.

"If it could be proven that we did it," Charlie replied, "just like we could have had all of them court-martialed at least once if we could have conclusively proved which of them had committed the various unpleasant things that happened to us, some of the other officers, each other, and pretty well everyone else." Dana reddened a bit, cleared her throat and looked out the window at the passing countryside. "Fortunately for all concerned, they were finally able to prove their worth once the fun started, and afterwards while we were helping to clean up the mess."

"As I told you in our earlier correspondence, Harold Moser has been working for me for the past twelve years and has had nothing but excellent reviews from all of the people he's dealt with," said Lakash thoughtfully. "He's been especially valuable as a veterinarian, and veterinarian Mages are very hard to find. That's why I and the other heads of Order of St. Thrimble Chapters are fully behind the idea of a Veterinarian Mage School. Having it in my precinct is an extra bonus, and having him as one of its founding Professors even more so."

"Do you think he'd go for it?" Mary asked as the coach swayed gently.

"He's been dropping hints for the past year or so that he thinks that it's time for him to settle down in Magwitch with Leila and his daughter. Like the rest of us, he isn't getting any younger and all that walking eventually takes it toll on anyone. I would be astonished if he turned it down."

"It nearly ripped my heart out watching him standing on the pier as my ship left Carcosa," said Dana quietly. "I know that the Carcosans were anxious to get us out once they were back on their feet, and the Powers That Be were equally anxious, given how much it was costing the Treasury, but they had made a special request to keep the Healers to help train theirs, who had been under tight restrictions during the Yellow Autarch's regime. They badly needed to upgrade their skills, and we could hardly refuse. He had found a couple who had veterinary potential and was giving them the crash course. I still don't know when he finally came back to the Kingdom, as he never tried to contact me."

"Maybe he'd found out that you'd gotten married to another engineer and were out in various places building the roads that the King and Queen think are so necessary," said Charlie dryly as they recovered from a bump from a particularly big pothole. "Maybe if this School gets off the ground, we can persuade them to properly pave this road," he muttered, rubbing the side of his head.

"As Dean of Engineering, I think that I can apply some pressure," replied Dana. "I'm amazed that we didn't lose a wheel on that one."

"Why would an Engineer come out to an announcement of a Veterinary School?" asked Mary.

"The Healers couldn't spare anyone because they're trying to get a handle on the venereal disease problem in the Docklands," Dana said, shaking her head, "and once I'd found out that he was here, I'd been looking for a reason to come visit to catch up on old times. I'm aware that he's been claimed by the Town's Healer, so there won't be any hanky-panky," she added severely, glowering at the two officers, who maintained carefully neutral expressions.

"And what brings you two on this expedition?" Lakash asked them. The landscape was slowly changing to indicate that they were now passing through the northern outskirts of the town. Passing the "Welcome to Magwitch" sign was a more obvious clue.

"Moser has some back pay with interest and a couple of medals that he never claimed when he finally returned," said Mary, indicating a nice leather-bound briefcase on the seat between her and Charlie. "We'd heard that he'd quietly visited the Capital a few years ago to collect the prize for making the Air Sled spell work better, but we were out of town reviewing a regiment and couldn't get it to him. As his former commanding officers, it's our duty to present the medals to him personally, and, like Dana, we would like to catch up with what he's been doing too."

"On the Use of Erotic Energy to Stabilize the Air Sled Spell," Dana mused as the coach slowed down to make its way through the Sunday traffic in the business area. "He made quite a splash with that when it was published in the Journal of Applied Magical Sciences. It apparently set off a wave of experiments of applying lewdness to other problematic spells, with a surprising amount of success."

"We'll have chance to ask him about his inspiration," said Lakash as they all chuckled. "The paper gave no indication of it at all, just a clear and detailed overview of the spell as it was and a description of the steps required to stabilize it. It was very well done." He paused, and he and Dana got distracted expressions. "I feel another Mage nearby. It may be the Town's Healer, Leila Parsons, as it doesn't feel like Harold's signature." The coach had finally come to a halt in front of a tastefully-decorated building whose sign proclaimed it to be the Dewdrop Inn.

"Cute name," said Charlie. "Let's get out of here and stretch our legs. It's been a very long trip." Dana, who was seated by the door on the forward side of the coach, was about to open the door when the driver beat her to it. Charlie was first, checking for the highly unlikely event of hostile people, followed by Mary, who did the same.

"Nothing to see here," said Mary, making shooing motions at the townsfolk who were slowly accumulating, but they didn't go anywhere. Then Dana and finally Lakash emerged, looking around and being thankful that the rain had finally stopped. Then they stopped and turned toward the Inn, where they saw Harold's face in a window of what they deduced was a restaurant. Charlie and Mary turned as well, and Mary continued, "well, at least we don't have to turn the town upside down looking for him."

"Excuse me, Healer coming through," said a woman's voice loudly as a medium-sized woman wearing a broad-brimmed pale blue hat over long hair that was part copper, part silver, gently but firmly pushed her way through the small crowd, trailed by a girl of about 11 who was wearing a medium-brimmed white hat over attractive, long auburn hair. "I'm Leila Parsons, and this is my daughter Marcie. Welcome to Magwitch." She gave them a polite bow, which Marcie hastily copied. "Lakash, this is a surprise! It's been a couple of years since you've come by this way. Marcie, this is Lakash Moto, the head of the Chapter of the Order of St. Thrimble that your Papa works for." The others towered over the Healer's slight figure as he stepped forward for a closer look.

"I'm pleased to meet you, sir," said Marcie, performing the Polite Bow #2 that Harold and Leila had taught her for just such occasions. "Papa says that you are the least evil person he's ever worked for," she added with a mischievous grin, getting surprised laughs from the others, including him. She turned towards the Inn and waved at her Papa.

"You are definitely his daughter. I've never seen eyes that colour except his. Leila, it's good to see you again. May I introduce you to Colonel Charlie Hopper, Colonel Mary Malone, and Dana Magnussen, Dean of Engineering at the Mage Academy in the Capital." They stepped forward to shake her hand, and then Marcie's, and the small audience around them applauded politely. Now that the mystery of their identities had been cleared, they began to drift away. "We came here looking for Harold, with an offer that we think will be of great interest to him, and perhaps to you and the Town as well." There was the faint sound of a crash of crockery that came from the Inn that distracted their attention from the driver.

"Shall I get the luggage down while you check in?" he inquired in a mellow baritone.

"Please do, Mark," Dana replied. "Wherever Harold is, something's bound to be going on," she added dryly. "Lead on, Leila," she added with a gracious gesture.

"What is that man doing now?" she asked, shaking her head ruefully. She led them up the path towards the steps that would get them onto the verandah.

"Are you brave enough to be married to him?" Mary asked.

"Not quite," was her reply. "We're married in spirit, but not technically. That will change this evening. Since you're here, you're invited to come join us." They had reached the foot of the stairs and the door popped open, revealing a small woman in an elegant red coat, a small-brimmed red hat on top of a round, wrinkled face and cloud of snowy white hair. The pile of tan, black, and white carpet that they had seen on the verandah suddenly resolved itself into a large dog that lumbered to its feet, tail wagging, and moved to greet the woman, who bent to pat its head.

"Miss Keystone, are you all right?" piped Marcie, concerned at the woman's pale face.

"Hello, Marcie," she said in a pleasant voice. "I'll be fine. Chef Ralph managed to get a nasty cut on his arm, and I don't react well to blood. Healer Harold is taking care of him, and he also did an excellent job on Tiny's cataracts. I'll just head on home." The group made way for her and the dog as they went down the three steps. "See you tonight, dear," she said to Leila, patting her arm before moving down the path and turning right on the sidewalk.

"He doesn't know, does he?" said Lakash good-humouredly as they mounted the steps. "And congratulations, by the way." The others offered theirs, though Leila thought that she sensed some sadness from Dana.

"Nope!" exclaimed Marcie with a big, gap-toothed grin, opening and holding the door for them. "It'll be a big surprise!"

"One of many for today," said Dana as the group filed through the door.

"Welcome, guests," said Emma Green from behind the large reception desk. She was a tall, curvaceous blonde with bright blue eyes and a large, winning smile under a small, pointed nose. "Leila and Marcie too. Harold is in the restaurant, tending to our injured Chef Ralph. Would you care to sign in?"

"The driver will sign us in," said Lakash, as the door opened behind them and Mark, burdened with some large suitcases, entered the lobby. Charlie shifted the briefcase, which was clearly heavy, to his other hand. "They haven't seen Harold for many years and would like to renew their acquaintance."

"No problem!" said Emma, gesturing towards the restaurant, from which some noise was coming. "The rooms aren't going anywhere. Oh, you're cute," she said, addressing Mark.