NOVEL NEXT 54 – Air Like Gunpowder
Another, and another, in the time it took his compatriots to move one barrel, the old man had moved three… Only to double over in pain clutching his lower back, barking something about how he would have to sit out the evening, much to the other old men’s chagrin. They half-jokingly said how they’d buy him a healing potion if he fought, how it was his duty to get better or their bets would be wasted.
Yet more walking. Yet more small details pulled at both Zel’s and Zef’s attention. Even in this relaxed context, they both remained attentive to their surroundings, each for their own reasons - Zel in large part because she felt no desire to mentally check out at this moment. Finally reaching the busy street which contained their destination had them stopping for a moment to gawk at a busker on the street corner. The first thing they noticed was his voice - strong albeit smooth, simultaneously flavored by a clear intonation and a mixture of so many accents it formed into its own unique sound, and it sung with great levity of a mercenary’s harrowing life. Of not knowing whether one would survive the day, of how his family was dead and his hometown ablaze, how he razed entire towns himself and how he found the irony of it all the more amusing.
One verse struck them in particular, perhaps because it was the first one they saw him sing, and with it saw both his bizarre appearance and the implacable energy of the man. A mixture of danger and levity, like the man viewed war itself as one big joke, a stage play for his own amusement.
“Glory, glory what a helluva way to die, glory, glory I’m just lucky to be alive! Glory, glory let’s all fight another war! Let’s all go sail once more!” the man sang - not with showmanship, but the gallows humor-esque levity one would expect from a soldier singing for his friends.
He sat on a curious metal stool, dressed in extravagant combat armor pieced-together from discordant sets. There were pistols strapped to his belt, a generously adorned bolt-action breech loader on his back, and a weird-looking club sat by his side. His boots were shod with spikes, his thighs, knees and elbows protected by heavy plate, while his chest and shoulders bore lamellar, and it was all held together by a weird mass of leather, fabrics, strings and belts. His hair and beard both were braided and adorned with golden beads, and much in the same fashion, his ears and neck bore a great deal of jewelry. In fact, the amount of jewelry upon him rivaled that upon the Divine Emperor, even if it was likely a fraction of the price. He turned his head and they saw the gaping hole in his right temple, plugged by a coin with a polished amethyst set into it.
In his hands he had a guitar that he strummed a simple melody on, and he bounced his leg in rhythm on the pedal of a drum. The guitar case he had set out on the ground had a couple dozen coppers and a few silvers, a few other foreign coins that Zel couldn’t recognize. Over and over he sang the same pattern - what a hell of a way to die, what a hell of a way to die, over and over again, intercut by brief verses recounting his exploits.
“I’ve murdered filthy zipperheads, and a couple pirates too, I’ve toppled Imperial Golems and survived to tell it true, if there’s one thing that I’m counting on it’s never being bored! I’ll gladly sail once more…”
As they approached Collier’s, a few more things became evident. The guards surrounding the city hall were conspicuously grizzled-looking, conspicuously well-dressed, and conspicuously well-armed. No spears, no sparklocks. They had well-maintained war-knives on their belts, and were strapped with two firearms each - a chunky five-barreled pepperbox, and one of those strange lever-guns that Zel had seen at Collier’s.
They reached the store’s front door, only to find a strange sign affixed to the door.
HEAVY WORKLOAD
DON’T EXPECT
TO BE SERVED
An armed and armored mercenary singing for fun on the street corner, common guards armed with weapons analogous to the equipment of a modern knightly order, a prodigal gunsmith too swamped with work to attend to her customers. It felt like the dust which filled the air was gunpowder, like the sunbeams which shone down from above could ignite it any moment.
Zel briefly regarded the sign, then just grabbed the door handle and stepped in. The store stunk of gunpowder, varnished wood, ozone, and burned iron - the stench that came about from welding or grinding the metal. In short, it smelled like a gunsmith’s workshop, just far more intensely than the last time they’d been here.
Collier was nowhere to be seen, and the displays were at best half-empty. The only ones left on display were single specimens of the mass-produced models and those that looked so ridiculously overwrought that it was no wonder none had bought them. They exchanged looks, and wordlessly decided to browse for a few minutes before they tried to call out to the gunsmith, just in case.
So many variants of revolver, each more richly engraved, each more overdesigned than the last. One had three barrels and a comically oversized cylinder. Another had an intricate belt of chambers hanging where its cylinder should’ve been.
Simple muzzle-loader shotguns dominated the displays - glorified lengths of steel pipe affixed to stocks blatantly recycled from destroyed sparklocks, they even used the same firing mechanisms, the same hammers, the same uniform Ignis gems. Dust swirled about, the sun shined through the windows, and the shop was silent… For a while.
The sound of a lock, that of a door handle, then cacophonous machinery-noise flooded in. Loud humming of a lathe, thunderous slamming of a mechanized smith’s hammer, a grinding-wheel screaming a lighter note in the absence of something to grind against.