Jon had expected everyone to be asleep by the time he got back to the village. Not that it was particularly late, of course. He just didn’t want to deal with anyone right now and had hoped for a quiet night, but the world did not oblige. Instead, as he walked by the tavern, it was overflowing, and once they saw him walking towards home half of them spilled out into the main street.
“Just what in the hells was that," one man demanded as he blocked Jon’s way.
“Not even a fire blooded could make the windows shake across the whole valley like that,” another added. Jon honestly hadn’t thought it was quite as loud as what people were saying, but they were definitely worked up. He had to tread carefully here. These men weren’t enemies, they were just scared.
“What do you think?” he forced himself to sound cheerful, even if he didn’t really mean it. “What you heard was the sound of victory.”
“That didn’t sound like any victory I ever heard,” the first man said. “How many was there?”
“Almost fifty,” Jon replied before he thought about it. Incredulous as they were, he should have lied about that part to make it seem less challenging than it was. He didn’t though, and the look of shock spread almost instantly across the face of every man he could see.
“Fifty men with one spell? That don’t sound like no fire blooded I ever heard of. It sounds diabolic to me, and not at all like the magic they talk about in the stories.” Another man added from the doorway, a large tankard still in his hand. Drunk and devout was always a bad combination, so Jon thought about his next words carefully.
“Just one spell?” He asked, feigning offense. “As if what I did tonight could be reduced to a single spell. How about instead of accusing me of such terrible things, you listen to my side of the story over another drink, and then you decide what’s what?”
Silence lingered for a moment, before Jon added, “A round of drinks on me then, to celebrate today’s incredible victory.” This at least caused a ragged cheer.
Jon was certain that none of these men had any desire to drink with him right now, but it would only cost him a couple of silver eighths and an hour or two of sleep to keep this set of rumors from spinning too far out of control. He kicked himself for not making this part of his plan as he walked inside. There were a lot of bodies to be buried tomorrow, and that would make anything they were saying now that much worse.
Room was made for Jon at the bar, and once he paid for his generous offer, beers were pulled and tankards were passed around. Jon let the bolder members of the group pepper him with questions, while he looked around the room, pleased to see some of his volunteers were present. He only answered those questions with a noncommittal laugh or a wry smile while he waited for everyone to get settled. Did he really sell his soul to the dark ones? Could he really summon dragons? Did he eat coal and piss fire? At first his good humor was forced, but as each question grew more and more nonsensical, he was eventually laughing in earnest.
Only once that died down did he finally start speaking. He told his story slowly, focusing on the dramatic part where they marched up to the gate, and the dialog. He played up the disdainful captain, doing a passable impression of the doomed man’s voice as he said, “what you have just done is an assault on my men and an insult on my person. You will surrender immediately, or I’ll have you drawn and quartered for that.” That drew more than a few laughs. It was only once he had them off balance that he told them about the explosion.
“So you used dwarven magic, and that killed them all?” one of the younger men, about Jon’s age, asked.
“In a manner of speaking.” Jon agreed. “Several lived though." He tried to tell them about his conversation with the herald, and the message, but he kept getting interrupted with questions about dwarves and blood magic so often that he just gave up.
“Marv, when you were helping me grind all that coal dust, did we do it at midnight under a moonless sky?” Jon asked suddenly, singling out one of the men at the back of the room that he’d worked with earlier in the day.
“What?” the man asked, caught of guard. “It was all just coal dust. Lots and lots of coal dust.”
“Ten flour sacks worth, maybe? Did you see me add any blood, animal, virgin, or otherwise?” Jon asked theatrically.
“No!” Marv answered. “We just loaded sacks of flour, and then you took them to the palisade to set your trap.”
Jon nodded, satisfied. “There you have it. Perfectly ordinary coal dust.”
“I seen a lot of coal burn, and I ain’t seen any of it ever explode like that.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Well, I could explain it to you, but I doubt you’ll believe how simple it was,” Jon answered, taking a long draw from his tankard. “Maybe you should just ask Junis what we did with it. He was there too.”
All eyes turned to Junis, and he wilted a bit under their gaze before he found his voice. “All we did was hang them up and tie the bags with twine at the bottom, so they could be ripped open nice and easy.”
“You sure about that?” Jon asked. “No incantations? No beseeching the dark ones in my hour of need?”
Junis’ only response to that was laughter, and Jon shrugged helplessly. “See?” he said. “Perfectly normal coal dust.”
“Then what’s the secret? How do you make coal explode like dwarvish powder?” One man asked.
“Is that the same way they make their brands work too?” another said, starting to put two and two together. That made Jon smile. When the secrets of dwarvish magic were shared with the world above, he had no doubt that the kingdoms of men would master them in no time at all.
“That’s a good guess, but it’s a bit more complicated.” Jon answered. “Dwarves have discovered a lot of neat tricks that we call magic, but this one is something that any blacksmith knows.”
“Do they now?” Jon looked down the bar for the voice to discover the town blacksmith, Staven sitting there. “Tell me then, boy, what is it I’m supposed to know that’s such a lethal secret?”
Jon took another drink to let the suspense build. That was the question everyone wanted to know, and thankfully it was simple enough that everyone would be able to understand it. “That fire burns hotter when it has more air to breathe.”
Staven had been prepared to shout down whatever Jon claimed, so when he said something so simple, his mouth opened and closed several times wordlessly before he finally managed to say, “That is… so.”
“So you killed them with hotter fire?” someone asked. “Is that how your fire dragon works?”
“The fire dragon you speak of is all magic,” Jon said, “The explosion you heard though, that was mostly dwarven magic. Basically, I rigged the bags, so I could tear them open, and then the coal was in such small pieces that it could float in the air. It was only once it was thoroughly mixed that I lit it on fire, and that way a hundred pounds of coal released all its fire in a single second rather than burning steadily for hours.”
It was working.
Jon could tell that it was. It wasn't just that the questions were being handled well, or that he had supporting witnesses speaking in his favor, though. It was that the answers were terribly boring. Other than mages, most people didn’t really care how magic worked. It simply was, and now that it was breaking the situation to its most basic level, they were starting to lose interest. Normally that would be fine, but since he had so much attention right now, he might as well use it.
“Believe me,” he said, “any one of you could have basically done the same thing with a hot coal and a good throwing arm. Tomorrow though. I want to get all the fire and air bloods I can at the Manor tomorrow morning. I do have some tricks to teach them that you need some feel for magic to use properly.”
“But no one in the village has a tenth of the power you do with these things,” the man by Jon’s left elbow said. “What can you teach them that they can actually handle?”
“Well, fire dragons are completely out of the question,” he answered with a big smile, and then waited for the laughter to die down before he finished. “There are other tricks, though. Things that would be useful to know once I’ve left in case bandits or worse show up.”
“You think they’ll send the army to Dalmarin?” one man asked, suddenly afraid.
“The army?” Jon asked dismissively. “When my men go south, the king and his dwarven allies will be too busy trying to stop me to spare even a unit for any other problem in the kingdom. You can bet on that.” Everyone nodded at that at least. If he could take out a unit by himself, it wasn’t hard to believe that he’d be able to keep an army or two tied down pretty easily once he had one of his own.
“What if you want to help, but… but you aren’t fire or air blooded. Is there anything you can do?” Jon was gratified to see that this man wasn’t one of his current volunteers. That was good. He’d need all the help he could get for what came next.
“Everyone’s help is welcome,” Jon answered. “Whether that’s for a day or two here in Dalmarin, or if you want to march with me when I leave in a few days. I’ll turn no man away from my banner. It’s an army of the people, after all.”
After that there were more questions and more jokes, and Jon lingered for a while, but he made his escape as soon as it was seemly. It had been a good use of his time, but his bed was calling to him. At least getting to explain away a bit of his magical mystique had not only made him a bit more approachable, he thought, but it had taken the bad taste out of his mouth that he’d had after he left his particularly violent parlay.
Things were going well. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day his friends would arrive, and tomorrow he would teach a few people in the village how to use a dwarven wand without powder. Things were going good. Now all he had to do was wait for the train, and then the real fun could finally start.
On his way back to the manor, Jon tried to tell himself that he should stop and appreciate the quiet moment like this. That once things got busy, he would miss all the quiet afternoons that he hadn’t spent talking with old friends under the shade of a tree, but it didn’t help. While he wasn’t quite excited about the war that was to come, he couldn’t really enjoy much else as long as it was right there on the horizon.