Darius Chapter 20

Silfor was frightening when she was in a good mood. It meant she had thought of something dastardly. She had left Darius and Bart alone after their ‘success’ the day before and given them a break from their work while the servants cleaned up Quaren.

Her next order of business was to commission an ungodly amount of arrow casts from the potters of Erinstone. She had these delivered to the castle and stacked up in giant towers in the King’s Forge, the corridors outside it, and in wooden bins outside the castle entrance, covered by canvas. It took two days for her to organize.

On the third day, Darius and Bart were once again let out of their cells by two new guards. These two gave them a wide berth when they swung open the door. They headed to work. Darius and Bart hadn’t been able to bask in the sun since they’d arrived five days ago, and today wasn’t looking any more likely.

When they arrived at the forge, Silfor was sitting in a small chair Bart had ordered from the servant. She held one of the arrow casts from the mountain around her.

“Morning chaps! You’ll see I’ve made a small purchase on your behalf. I think you might get where I’m going with this, but if not, I want you to make each of these casts into an explosive arrow, okay? Good.”

Darius looked around the room and back out the door at the casts. They’d had two successes in five days. At that rate, they’d be making arrows for the rest of their lives.

“Silfor, this is a lot of casts – we could’ve made our own reusable casts out of sand and a few other items.”

Silfor walked over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder.

“Darius! How many times do I have to tell you! You have the full power of the royal coffers on your side. I asked around about reusable casts and they take forever to make and use. These ones didn’t even make a dint in the budget I’ve been given to spend on you.”

Darius shook his head, disappointed that the tax dollars of Erinstone were going to this rather than one of the far more desperate areas of the city. For the people of Mouse’s Melee, it was ‘out of sight, out of mind.’

Silfor left them to start their work. Bart had started heating the forge and had thrown back the canvas on the iron. Today, the smell was a bearable mix of rotten eggs and sweaty boots – an improvement for sure.

Once the forge was heated, they performed a similar process to making the dagger that had led to the creation of the magic chest plate. Because of the delicate profile of the arrowhead, Bart held a small funnel in his gloved hand as Darius tipped the contents of the crucible in, taking care to only pour a bit at a time.

When the metal cooled, the rough arrowhead was locked into a vice and Bart filed it down to a sharp point and smooth edges. Any small nick or uneven side would stop the arrow from flying straight, so precision was paramount.

When Darius was satisfied with Bart’s work, he placed it on the wide workstation in front of him. He unhooked his hammer and hefted its weight, trying to summon some semblance of the emotions he’d felt the past two times it had worked.

He juggled his hammer, closing his eyes as he thought. He pictured Bart being beaten down by Quaren, his dream of Marth being surrounded by enemies, anything that evoked strong emotions.

He opened his eyes.

“ESHEN!”

He felt the magic course through him from his chest, along the length of his arm, and through his hammer into the arrowhead. When he struck the arrowhead, the BANG was again not as impressive as the battle axe, perhaps due to the small size of the arrowhead. But it worked.

“You ripper!” Bart yelled out in triumph.

Darius couldn’t help but smile, proud of their work. And now he’d confirmed how to replicate it.

The rest of the day went by in a rush. They produced arrowhead after arrowhead, making a sizeable dent in the stocks of iron they had been left with. They filled two wooden boxes with their work, about one hundred and fifty exploding arrowheads. By the end of the day, Darius was becoming uneasy about the speed at which they worked. Every item they produced made the Erinstone army more and more formidable, a completely unfair advantage over the rest of the Continent. But war was war.

Silfor stopped by to check their progress. She was surprised to see two wooden boxes full of arrowheads sitting against the wall. The boxes emitted a dull blue glow, reflecting the light hue around the Forge. She shocked the smith and apprentice while they worked, almost causing Darius to pour molten iron over Bart’s arm.

“Darius! Bart! You geniuses! Look at this, these are wonderful.”

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She scooped up an arrowhead, taking care not to cut herself on the sharp tip. Holding it close to her face, she made approving noises as she inspected it.

“It doesn’t feel any different to a normal arrow, right?”

Darius placed down the crucible and picked up an arrowhead himself. She was right. When he had held the axe, he could feel its power humming through him, but with the arrow, there was almost nothing - a small amount of energy perhaps, but it could’ve been his mind playing tricks on him. Silfor placed the arrowhead back in the box, taking care not to disrupt the pile. She called to the newest guards on her retinue.

“Hullooo? You two, come grab one of these boxes each please, and take it to the carriage down near the guardhouse.”

The two men hustled in and picked up the boxes, waddling back out and down the corridor with the awkward weight in their arms.

When they reached the carriage that was parked about twenty meters down the hill from the castle, one of the men put down his box and pulled open the curtain at the rear of the vehicle. His compatriot, keen to rid himself of the heavy box and get out of the hot sun, made one mistake.

He tossed his box into the carriage.

What followed was the largest explosive detonation in Erinstone’s recent history. It sounded as though the entire Royal District had been swallowed in a cloud of thunder and then spat out along with a thousand lightning strikes. Across the city, the religious folk fell to their knees and begged for mercy from the god they figured must have come to cleanse Erinstone. Marth, Bart and Silfor all fell to the ground, and they heard blocks of stone falling out in the corridor, smashing onto the polished floor.

The two guards and the carriage hadn’t fared so well. If there had been any parts of the men still in one piece, the shockwave from the blast had sent them far away over the bounds of the cliff or deep into the Trader’s District. The carriage too, was left only as dust in the wind, not even splinters flying off into the surroundings. If not for the crater and the spattering of arrowheads nearby, it almost seemed like nothing had happened aside from the bang.

But something had happened. First of all, Darius and Bart’s days' work had gone mostly to the can. Some arrowheads were retrievable, but luck of the draw and the angle of the box when the guard had thrown it had sent most of the contents out over the top of the castle and into the ocean. Secondly, the small number of arrowheads that rocketed south were now littered around the Trader’s District and Mouse’s Melee. The cat was now out of the bag, and it was never going back in.

Almost immediately, there were secondary blasts as random citizens picked up the arrowheads, then tossed them away, thinking they were invaluable. The destruction spread throughout the city until people got the message that the arrowheads were not to be touched.

Silfor recovered first. She was furious.

“Those stupid fucking FOOLS!”

She sprinted along the corridor as fast as her tight shoes would allow. Darius and Bart unfurled themselves and followed, already knowing what to expect. The floor was covered in a thin layer of dust that had been shaken from the walls, and Darius felt none too excited about sleeping in his bed tonight, noticing a room along the hall that had a giant block of stone crushing the bedframe beneath it.

When they made it outside, Darius rushed to the edge of the crater, observing the chaos. He picked up arrowheads as he found them, like a child hunting for shells on the beach.

Silfor was pissed off. She knew this would require a significant amount of explaining, directly to her father. He would give her the same old spiel about responsibility and being held to a higher standard blah blah blah.

But it was a lesson well learnt, and it gave her inspiration for a new type of weapon.

The crater had to be left as it was – there was no dirt to fill it back in as it too had been vanquished. Silfor had a couple of servants organize for a team of laborers to lug dirt from the quarries into the Royal District. The quarries were situated a decent distance outside the walls of Erinstone, but they were heavily guarded and transporting the dirt would be no larger of a task than deliveries of iron.

After the excitement died down, Silfor realized Darius and Bart were outside the castle walls. She called the guards to bring them back in, not complaining when Darius received a boot in the back for dawdling. Her frustration had to go somewhere.

Back in their cells, Darius and Bart dealt with the painful implications of their creations. Already they had claimed three lives just in the production of their work, and it wasn’t going to end there. Darius made a mental note to store the arrowheads each in their own padded wrap – avoiding the potential for a catastrophic explosion in a more densely populated area.

He thought further about his new skill. If the stories of Rath were true, it couldn’t be right that he was limited to just explosive weapons. ‘Eshen’ couldn’t be the only trick up his sleeve. He closed his eyes and balled his fists on his forehead, rubbing his knuckles on his skin as he tried to raise some memory of anything else his grandfather used to say. How easy life would’ve been if the magical word he’d tried first had made weapons and armor into anything else. He would’ve killed for an arrow that made its victim fall in love – he could get King Draythar to shoot King Ranvost and it would all be said and done!

His fanciful thoughts were interrupted by a group of guards in the castle anteroom. He put his ear to the hole in his door, listening in on their conversation.

“– ran away in the night, the whole lot of them.”

“Heldrus Avongold too! Mycah told me that she heard him and Layla having a screaming fest at each other just before he left – she reckons that Layla said some funny things about...Lady Silfor as well”

The guard paused and looked around before mentioning Silfor. He quite liked his head where it was on his shoulders.

“I don’t know what spooked Prince Ranvost, though. I heard he was spotted leaving the city before there was even the stampede at the Royal Forge. He must’ve gotten spooked by something, surely? To turn tail and run like that – he won’t be so healthy when our lads catch up with them, I heard Mitrev is leading the mission.”

Darius ducked behind the door as the guards dissipated. He had heard Mitrev speaking to Silfor earlier – he had been heavily in support of punishing the rioting soldiers with more than just latrine duty. He sounded vicious.

But one piece of information was far more important than the rest.

Marth had escaped Erinstone.

And he was on the run.