Jon stood, looking around at the carnage that surrounded him. It was a sight that had grown too common recently. At least this time there were only three bodies though. Still, he couldn’t just leave them out for the crows to peck out their eyes, as much as he hated them. Not only would it scare the people of the village, but there was no way that the next train was going to stop if this place looked like a warzone. So grudgingly he dragged the first body back inside, and then rather than going for the next one immediately, he walked back to Boriv’s office and looked through the mass of postings and notes on the wall until he found the one he was looking for: the current train schedule. Even if he hadn’t been able to read dwarvish he would have been able to recognize it easily enough among the clutter. The timing and number of routes might change every season, but the format had been the same since he started his apprenticeship and he couldn’t read a word of it back then. After a couple minutes of searching he finally pulled it off the wall. It had been more difficult to find than he’d thought because it was practically empty now.
Five years ago trains ran through Dalmarin twice a week, but now it looked like they only merited a once a ten day route. Scanning through the lines Jon saw that there were still just as many trains going to the big cities as ever - more even, probably. The kingdom below was a hungry place, and every day whole granaries descended into the depths to feed them. The capital alone received ten trains a day, but most of the traffic that had been going through the shield lands looked like it had been re-routed to the south instead. It was just another symptom of the area's falling fortunes. The homes, the roads, and even the rail schedule - they all told the same story. The wealth of the region had been sucked dry, and no matter how fertile the bottom lands and the high pastures were, it could not feed the rapacious greed that preyed on it. It was the same everywhere that he’d been in the last couple years, but it hit harder to see it happening to his home.
Jon picked up Boriv’s ledger and sat down on his desk, ignoring the body cooling at his feet, and reviewing the current accounts. “Looks like you’re down pretty bad lately. You never would have tolerated this little profit when I was here, would you? You’d be screaming at me ‘These figures can't be right lad. Ye need to check em again!’” he said in his best Boriv impression to the dwarf’s corpse. “Do you think that maybe, I don’t know - you’d do better if you stuck to selling the eggs instead of slaughtering the golden goose for a few eighths?”
Jon waited a bit for a response that would never come before he stood and tossed the book across the room as hard as he could. That it didn’t fly apart at the seams and send pages everywhere when it hit the wall was a testament to whoever bound the thing. “No - of course you didn’t because you’re dwarves. The only things you know how to save are coins! You’ve got to mine every vein until it’s tapped out!” Yelling at the dead wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it would have been to finish the conversation he’d come here to have, he thought bitterly.
After that Jon only stayed in the office long enough to find Boriv’s key and coin purse. There were probably more things worth taking tucked away here and there, but the ghosts of the past lingered heaviest in the most familiar places and he couldn’t deal with that right now. Instead, he went outside and sat on a bench in the shade to reload his revolver. Even though it had one shot left, he was loath not to be fully loaded should he need the weapon. That was doubly true in a place like this where he was sure to find plenty of dwarven powder tucked away. He’d better anyway - his plan required as much as he could find.
The process of forcing powder, wadding, and shot in each barrel before attaching the cap to the rear of each had been difficult when he’d first been forced to learn it through trial and error, but Jon had gotten the hang of it quickly, and now his hands moved automatically while his mind was focused on larger things. As usual his mind drifted to the idea that with a thousand guns like these he’d be able to bring any kingdom in the land to their knees, he was sure of it, but they were rare even among Dwarves - and their manufacturing was a secret more zealously guarded than the powder they used. He hadn’t met a human smith yet who thought they could reproduce the small complex pieces and their tight tolerances. Just finding men that could make a crude brand was hard enough. It didn’t matter - there were plenty of ways to bring down a system so utterly bankrupt as the one he faced and he had one hell of a plan.
Jon sighed, standing up and rotating the cylinder before slamming it into place now that everything was loaded. Maybe after it succeeded he’d find a way to make his dream of fancier weapons for his side a reality. It wasn’t happening any time soon, he decided as he stowed everything away in his bag before dragging the other two bodies into the station. After that he grabbed a jug of lamp oil and locked it up, looking around at the blood smears and broken windows. The carnage might have been hidden away, but the evidence of it would take longer to disappear, and right now Jon just didn't have the stomach for it. Dragging bodies around reminded him too much of the day they came back from the tunnel and the dwarves stacked Marcus’s men like cords of wood in a shed until no more would fit. It was the last day he’d ever choose to remember on purpose, and even though the sight of other dead bodies hadn’t made him sick in years, the memory of those dead bodies still made him queasy.
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He still had the better part of a week to prepare for what came next though. If he could convince even a few men from the village to help him, it would be plenty of time. He looked at the building as he mounted his horse and resisted the urge to burn it all down for the tenth time today. It wouldn’t be hard. The furnaces were still running and the coal bunker was full. He might not be able to pull flames right out of the heated rock and scalding air like he could in the deep, but he could certainly turn this place into a firestorm without much of an effort. In fact, he thought wryly as he rode away, it was harder for him to restrain himself than it would have been to burn the whole place to ashes.
Jon had thought that the ride through town to the graveyard would have been entirely uneventful, but as his horse trotted through town it was anything but. Most people were already inside or elsewhere as he rode down the street, but the rest ran out of his path quickly enough that it was impossible to miss the fear that he inspired in them. Shutters were slammed and windows were closed in his wake. Women peeked out of doors or averted their eyes entirely and what few men weren’t in the field this time of day held sickles or pitchforks while they glared at him. One old man even wore a sword on his belt, and though he was well past his prime he certainly seemed willing to use it… The entire town probably would have been on edge if any stranger had showed up. It had always been a little insular and had taken years to get used to the arrival of his own family, but a stranger combined with the sound of shots fired - that was another thing entirely.
Jon hardly cut a fearsome figure on his old roan. He wasn’t particularly tall and his gelding wasn’t bred for battle. Even the weapon on his hip was a diminutive short sword barely bigger than the knives most of the village boys had to help with chores. He wore long sleeves and a wide straw hat to keep the sun off of him for the ride, but his tan from his recent time laboring in the field and in the cannery had hardly faded. His hair was getting scruffy and it had been a week or more since he’d had a proper shave. If anything he looked more like a vagabond than a mercenary or a bandit, but he hardly thought he looked like a villain. That impression had to be solely from the gunfire he’d spent the last half hour exchanging with the dwarves. Their opinion of him would likely fall further when they realized that everyone at the station was dead, but there was nothing he could do about that.
No one seemed to recognize him, even by the time he was halfway down the cobbles of the main street, which still surprised Jon even though he knew that it shouldn’t at this point. He didn’t recognize everyone, but certainly more than half of the people that looked at him riding by were familiar, and a few he knew by name. He saw that old Mr. Johnston was still the baker but that Junis had finally taken over his father’s cobbler shop. The sight of one of his childhood friends leaning in the doorway and trying to look menacing while holding such a small hammer made Jon crack a smile, and he tipped his hat to the teen who only glared in response. He was probably married by now, Jon realized. Hell - if he was running the shop he might have kids. That was a strange thought. All his friends had grown up to do what their fathers had done before him and have families of their own and in all that time what had he done? He’d just… he’d just learned how to survive, while the world went on without him. It was a depressing thought that brought him out of his nostalgia and back to the present.
None of that really mattered right now, he decided as he turned off of the main street to avoid getting lost in too many familiar sights. He could take the back way to the graveyard just as easily. It was impossible to get lost in a town this small. What actually mattered was when they found out he was the last surviving Shaw. When they found out he was the true warden of these lands, would they rally behind him or would they burn him in effigy? His father had been a fair and popular ruler, but Marcus had burned all of that goodwill down. In less than a week when he’d decimated the population of the valley and brought the wrath of the dwarves down on everyone’s head. In the end what would matter most was how hard the current lord was squeezing them, and how much that made everyone miss the good old days. He’d find out the answer to that question soon, but as he reigned in at the gate to the graveyard, he set those thoughts aside. They weren’t worth worrying about just yet. His plans could wait until after he’d paid his respects to his family.