Meanwhile, back in the Master's TARDIS.....Part 13

The society of the dwarf would soon be changed....into something new and.....very much like the Military ideal.....

*****

Meanwhile..... Astra 4 and children ride off into the night....destination unknown.....while her husband and Synizn (along with other magic using friends) try to track her down. Difficult, considering the spell still on her and the kids.....

Astra 4's seven children are in three carry-cots, three of them in one cot and two in each of the others. At roughly six months old, the three in the cot that the warg has picked up weigh some forty pounds in total, but the creature's strong jaws are up to the task. Astra slides her arms through the handle-loops of the other two cots, leaps onto the back of Elf Death, and grabs the reins. She would have slipped her feet into the stirrups, but they are intended for a creature with longer legs than hers, and the best she can do is to press her thighs into the warg's flanks. As soon as she has done so, Elf Death bounds out of the wagon, the leap causing even such a skilled horsewoman as Astra to struggle frantically to remain in the saddle - which like the stirrups is meant for a creature of very different dimensions than herself.

Once the warg is back on the ground, things are a little easier, though Astra wishes for once that she was a little less buxom, as her bra cannot altogether damp out the bouncing that its bounding run creates. Fortunately she can rest the cots that are on her arms on the warg's broad back; strong woman though she is, she couldn't long have endured a weight of thirty pounds on each arm. Her only real problem is her inability to steer, since the creature seems oblivious to her pulling on the reins.

She has no idea where she and her brood are being taken. The wagon had been traversing the edge of a plain, and the warg has headed into the forest that borders it on one side. Astra keeps her head low to the warg's neck, and hopes that it has enough woodcraft that they won't collide with a low branch. And she hopes above all else that the warg's jaws won't tire and that it will keep tight hold of its precious cargo.

She doesn't know why the warg has come to her aid in this unexpected fashion. She knows her infants seem to have an empathy with most domestic animals, but it doesn't occur to her that they could influence the actions of an almost-wild creature such as this. She doesn't realise how fortunate it was that the screams of horror of the dwarves as they transformed had woken her children from their slumbers, so they could take a hand.

The ex-dwarves might have been able to overhaul the heavily burdened warg (taking Astra's own weight into account, it is carrying close to 240 pounds in all - substantially more than the weight of its usual rider), but they have no idea in which direction it has gone. Ironically, they are hampered by the shaman's spell of untraceability cast on Astra and her children.

After an hour or so, Elf Death slows down to a brisk trot, but the first light of dawn is in the sky before it comes to a halt. Astra estimates that the dwarves had taken her almost twenty miles, and the warg probably about the same distance. Her children fell asleep again some hours before, but she knows they will be awake again before long and demanding to be fed. Wherever the warg might have brought them, she knows that they have no option but to remain in the immediate vicinity. The children can crawl, but none of them have taken their first steps yet, and there is no way that she could carry more than one or two of them for any distance.

Astra slips down from Elf Death's back, and then coaxes it to release its grip on the cot it has been carrying. She places the three cots on the ground, and then massages the stiffness out of her arms and legs. The warg bounds off. Probably looking for its breakfast, she thinks. Which reminds her that, whilst she can feed the children, her biggest problem may lie in feeding herself. Whilst she knows Fred 4 will come looking for her, it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack, especially as she suspects that the spell that the shaman cast was an anti-tracking spell, and it could be days or even weeks before she is found. The forest canopy above means that even if the Military can be persuaded to mount a search from the air, they may not find her. Unless she can manage to light a fire and keep it burning, so its smoke will reveal her position? But that might reveal where she is to her erstwhile captors as well. She looks at her surroundings in the dim first light of day.

And while Astra is looking around....

The monsterous female wolf who had been named Elf Death after her rider had named her for her silent stalking and killing of one of the Orcs' more annoying enemy races pants happily after feeding on some rather succulent rabbits (well away from her new little masters....for she somehow knew that such would frighten them terribly...and doing ANYTHING that wouldn't please her masters would be impossible for the wolf.

Elf Death then pauses in her route back to her charges....and the female human that had birthed them (nice enough for a human....and if her masters said that she was good then Astra was good in Elf Death's book). Something is strange! It's not the strange nature of this area she had fled to with her little masters in tow....it's a high.....hauntingly familiar voice she hears coming from a dim cluster of trees.

It sounds like the mother who whelp those heavenly little one's who Elf Death's lupine heart now belong to....but it was much higher pitched.

It was...an elfin voice?

The old Elf Death would have growled and leapte in, ready to tear the throat out of the owner of that voice. However, almost all of the her more aggressive instincts have been scrambled and rewired.....rewired to be a gentle and loving play thing for Astra 4's infants! Therefore, a silly lupine grin plasters itself on the magically charmed wolf, and the female silently stalks closer....for a little play.

1. AS Elf Death's tail wags a bit in excitement....the new elves are talking about who they are....and what happened to them up to this point.

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