Darius Chapter 11

Bart almost fainted when he saw Lady Silfor before them. He had never been this close to royalty and hearing the Crown Princess of Erinstone shout ‘What in the blasted bilgongs of Barratog’ was not what he expected from his first meeting. After hearing her shouts, three armed guards rushed to the scene with weapons drawn, eyeing off Darius and Bart, a single command from Silfor between them and serving up the two smith’s heads on platters. Silfor shooed them away.

“Oh, yip yip you lot I’m fine, leave me be for a moment, this is personal business.”

She handled them well despite having just seen the first instance of magic in thousands of years. The guards sheathed their swords and glared one last time at Darius before they exited back up the hill, giving the Lady some privacy with her sooty acquaintances.

Darius started off, trying to preempt the questions.

“Lady Silfor, I’m just gunna say, we’re as shocked as you at what just happened, there’s no use asking questions because whatever that was, it wasn’t intentional.”

Silfor wasn’t deterred.

“I’ll tell you what that was, it was magic! I knew I made the right choice when I hired you!”

She ruffled Darius’s hair like a child as she walked into the forge, her dress gathering the black of soot and coal as it dragged on the stone floor. She slowed as she approached the station where the axe had lain, as though she was afraid that one wrong step might transform her into the magical blue tendrils she had just seen emanating from the workstation. She touched the surface, tapping it with just one finger before deciding it was cool enough to put her palm on. To her disappointment, there was no magical feeling, it was just plain old steel.

She turned to Bart.

“Well, if Darius doesn’t know what happened, do you?”

Bart stood slack-jawed for a moment before realizing she was speaking to him. He shook his head like a schoolboy in trouble.

“N-No, Your Highness, I’m just an apprentish-er-apprentice.”

Silfor nodded and turned to Darius, beckoning to him to hand her the weapon. Darius hesitated, not sure if he should be giving the future Queen a heavy, deadly weapon that had spouted blue essence just moments ago. There was only a single slip between her and the loss of a few toes, or something more serious. He decided he also couldn’t refuse an order from the future Queen, so he handed it over. She balanced the weapon well, holding it near the top of the handle where the mighty axe-head counter-balanced the lighter handle. She looked it over but handed it back to Darius soon after.

“Huh, well, I don’t know what to make of this. I would like to run and tell my Father about whatever just happened, but I don’t think he’ll believe me until I have more evidence. Do you think you can recreate it?”

Darius didn’t look hopeful. He looked down at the axe and traced the delicate etching with his pointer finger as he thought.

“I'm sorry, Lady Silfor, I really have no idea what I did. For all I know, whatever that was might’ve ruined the axe. I’ll try it out.”

Darius went outside to the chopping block. Bart spent a good portion of his day here, chopping firewood to stoke the flames of the forge. Heaving a log onto the block, Darius took a moment to position it, then stood back. He held the axe in two hands, one at the base of the handle, and the other near the top. He swung it in an arc, sliding his top hand down as the axe approached the wood.

When the axe-head made contact, the log exploded.

A sound like thunder blasted around them and echoed through the forge, splinters of wood flying in all directions. Bart yelped and leapt in front of Silfor, covering his eyes with his arms. Silfor almost fell into the forge in shock, recovering at the last moment with a shining smile on her face. She ran towards Darius and the magic axe as her guards rushed back over the hill, convinced now that Silfor was in danger. They saw Darius with the axe in his hand, splinters covering him like prickles on a hedgehog, and gave him no second chances. The first tackled Darius to the ground, the soldier’s heavy metal armor crushing the wind out of him, and a second kicked the axe out of his hand before drawing his sword and levelling it at Darius’s throat. Silfor stomped over, yelling and kicking and beating the soldiers.

“No, no, no you donkeys! Get off the poor man, you useless sacks of tar! Off! My goodness how hard is it to follow an order?”

The soldier that took down Darius picked himself up out of the dirt, being none too gentle as he and his comrade heaved Darius to his feet. Again, they wandered off, this time going far enough to be out of earshot but watching the forge like a hawk circling its prey.

Darius took a moment to catch his breath and dust himself off, then called Bart.

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“Oi, Bart, you want a try? It’s probably worth finding out if it’ll work for anyone who swings this thing. Perhaps don’t swing it as hard though, eh?”

Bart looked to Lady Silfor for approval, not so eager to wield the explosive axe. She gave him a ‘go on’ motion, meaning he had to. He took the axe from Darius and walked to the chopping block, setting the axe down while he hefted a second log. Darius stopped him as he grabbed the axe again.

“Woahhh there mate, do we need to explode more wood? Perhaps something that won’t shoot tiny sharp projectiles at the Crown Princess over here. I got a watermelon from the old man when he delivered the axe, have a crack at that.”

Darius retrieved a watermelon from his larder, bringing it back cradled in his arms. The unwilling green sacrifice was placed on the chopping block and steadied by four sticks that stopped it from rolling. Finally, Bart got into position, heaving the axe high above his head, a slightly different style to Darius. As the blade fell towards the ill-fated melon, Darius watched for any evidence of the blue light they saw before, but nothing happened. Only when the blade made contact did they get their reward, another thunderclap and a spray of watermelon innards. Darius caught a seed in his mouth and Lady Silfor had gone from wearing a white dress to a light red, the stains of watermelon juice and pulp covering most of her front side. She didn’t seem to mind.

“Magnificent! Darius, Bart, I think you’ve earned a pay rise.”

Bart looked thrilled despite the watermelon juice in his eye, but Darius wasn’t convinced.

‘Lady Silfor, again, neither of us have any idea how this happened. We can’t recreate this for you.”

Lady Silfor wasn’t perturbed.

“Darius, you may think that, but I tell you what you can do. You can try. When that old man comes back, tell him to name his price, and I’ll buy the axe from him.”

With that, Silfor left with her guards. Bart turned to Darius, still holding the axe, stained with watermelon the same way Darius was peppered with splinters.

“Well boss, I think you’re going to be very famous once those guards spread the word throughout the barracks.”

Darius hadn’t thought of that. He had faith that Lady Silfor would keep quiet until she could directly benefit from the reveal – or at least more so than being the person to pick Darius out of the pack of potential Royal Smiths. But the soldiers had seen Bart swing the axe and explode the unfortunate fruit. Once they got to the barracks that evening, the word would be out. Loose lips sink ships.

“Aye, Bart. I’ll just tell them that you forged it while I wasn’t looking. You’d be out of my hair and running your own smithy in no time. Certainly would be easier for me.”

The pair went back into the forge, and for the next two hours, they each brought out all the weapons they had in the store, wielded their hammers above their heads, shouted ‘ESHEN!’ like Darius had before, and struck their respective piece of work. There was no glowing light, no blue tendrils dancing up to the ceiling, and no more explosive weaponry.

By the time they’d made it through their huge stores of weapons, the two smiths had collapsed from exhaustion – both mental and physical. The sun was perched on the horizon, casting long shadows across the forge. Being on the eastern side of the castle suited Darius – He got the direct sunlight beaming into the forge in the morning, right when he liked to wake up, and the sun hid itself quite early in the day once it was low enough for the armory and the barracks and the walls to block its rays. When this happened, Darius would usually take a slow walk around the eastern side of the castle, watching from the high cliffs as the waves formed into millions of peaks and troughs, and the seabirds floated on the breeze, watching for prey. Next, he would come back and have a simple dinner, generally sharing something cooked by some of the younger members of his team. To save himself time, and save his team money, he gave one of them a few coins each day to buy ingredients for their dinner, and some excess was usually left over for them to keep as thanks for their hard work. Darius was pretty sure you could buy loyalty. His apprentices and helpers all lived near the forge anyway, so this arrangement would’ve come about over time, but it didn’t hurt to get ahead.

Half sprawled on a bench, with Bart a few meters away on a low chair, Darius realized that it had just been himself and Bart in the forge all day. He broke the silence and called to Bart.

“Oi, I’ve just realized, where is everybody today? I guess we were pretty lucky that it was just you, me and Silfor here to see most of that spectacle, aside from the guards of course.”

Bart’s head jumped, and he looked across, one eye closed as he emerged from his nap.

“Hmm? What? Sorry, been a big day.”

“I said why did no one come to work today?”

“Ah, I suppose you wouldn’t know since you’re new around here, but today is the anniversary of King Draythar’s coronation. It’s a public holiday for everyone employed by the King.”

“King Draythar? Is he the current King? I thought that would be King Silfor?”

Bart burst out laughing, cackling for a while before looking at Darius’s shocked face sent him back into hysterics multiple times.

“King Silfor! Oh, good gods Darius, Silfor is the Crown Princess’s first name! In Erinstone, all the royals are distinguished by their title, then their first name. It avoids confusion if there are multiple princes or princesses or whatever other mixes and matches we have.”

“Oh! That is so strange, from what Marth has told me, they do things the other way in Barringvale. All his troops call him Prince Ranvost. So, what is Lady Silfor’s last name then?”

Bart couldn’t believe Darius had made it almost two weeks without knowing who he was ruled by.

“It should have been on the contract Silfor sent you – Her full name would be Silfor Taras, daughter of Draythar Taras.”

Darius thought back to the piece of damp paper he had left in the bottom of his pack. He supposed that was his contract.

“Fair enough, it’s probably good that I got that from you rather than Lady Silfor herself.”

Darius let his protégé go back to sleep, feeling the pangs of tiredness himself. Although not exactly productive, it had been a very eventful day, and he knew he would pay for his inactivity when the orders piled up the next day. At least the team would be back – Most of them were starting to show significant promise, though none as much as Bart. Darius wondered why the young man had decided to come into work on his day off.

‘Up to him, I suppose.’

Darius took one last look around the forge, cleaning up and taking stock of what was to be done tomorrow, then he slumped into his bed in his quarters, the soft mattress pulling him down into a deep slumber.

That night, Erinstone changed forever.