Fire and Sun - A KaW Novella?

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction' started by Ashvar, Jun 5, 2016.

  1. Dear KaWers here is the first chapter of my very own interpretation of KaW. Inspiration for this comes from too many places to list. Hope you enjoy


    Fire and Sun



    The Kingdom



    Chapter 1


    Caerwyn looked through the eye slit in his headgear turning first left than right to check his men were in place. All good he said to himself and turned his mind back to the task at hand.

    His vision was limited and he was sweating profusely in his gear. That’s what a triple layer of boiled leather and plates of stone-wood from the Southern Islands will do to you… Still he welcomed the weight for the protection it offered.

    The place was dark as night and hot as the pits of the underworld, the sound of metal crashing on metal made all but a bellow useless as communication. The only light came from fires and pools of molten metal, which gave off a tinny smell. In the distance a stream of water hit fused metal and hissed to the sky with a banshee cry; men shouted in the distance. Nothing he could do. Trust they know what they are doing he said to himself.

    Suddenly a spray of metal droplets was flung towards him. Instinctively he started to turn his head, to allow the hard wood to receive the searing metal but before he finished the torsion, a huge black hand was in front of him. Crag once again had stepped in.
    The old Titan's obsidian like body towered above all of them, easily the height of three tall men he had been with him all along. Caerwyn looked up in the amber eyes of the giant and nodded. As Crag took its place behind him the molten metal was sinking into his hand, being absorbed in the body of the Titan seamlessly.
    It is time! Caerwyn thought and bellowed the order “NOW, SHOVE NOW!”

    Crag leaned in and pushed the great limestone cast box off of the pouring stand and the rest of the squad ensured that it stayed on its wooden rollers for the 200 feet that separated it from the curing room. Once everyone was there, Caerwyn dropped the heavy wood and metal curtain between the foundry proper and the place where the new cannon would rest until it was time to get it out of its cast. The men started to break up, each with a job to do, Crag ambled out.

    Old Daffyd slapped Caerwyn on the shoulder as he took off his helmet.
    “A good day’s work Young Cai” calling him with the diminutive he had gotten as a toddler “that will be a good cannon for the king.”
    “Thanks”
    “You know, you have the making of being a better caster than you ‘Da before you reach 30 winters.”
    Caerwyn winced and was thankful that he could not answer. He was taking a deep swig from his canteen, but while the old hand had meant as the highest of compliments, the young man heard it as a sentence. He was 19 and already had worked for five years in the foundry.
    Two things he knew. The first was that this was not what he wanted to do. The second was that business was not good. The latter may help him to deal with the first.
    “I don’t know Daffyd; that is the first gun the King’s armory has commissioned in what? Four moons? Five?”
    “Five, yes.”
    “And it is a showpiece, we had to contract artisans from the guild to add chiseled figures of unicorns and dragons, and metalsmith to gild it. A gilded gun Daffyd.”

    The two men began making their way to the baths on the opposite side of the receiving yard in the late morning sun; they both needed that.
    “War has changed Master Caerwyn” the older man said his blue eyes looking in the distance
    As to underscore his words a large shadow passed over them followed by the keening sound of a thaumadrake. They looked on as the large beast flew towards its empyrean home.
    Caerwyn shook his head and spoke “It costs less to feed one of those beasts than to train a good gun crew and nobles prefer swooping on their enemies from the heavens above than to slog it in the dust and mud after a battery of cannons.”
    “No doubt.”
    “It is not just us Daffyd, many in the guild are casting anchors and turned their trip-hammers to make metal sheeting. What does that tell you?”
    “It tells me I am to old to do something new Young Master, that is why you are here.”

    The two walked into the baths that Caerwyn’s grandsire had built when the business was the biggest in the kingdom of Sher Dyff. The young man stripped off his work clothes and washed under running water. He looked at his face in the polished steel mirror: his oval face still had no major scars from hot metal, his eyes were green and had a gentle kindness in them and his short blonde hair framed him nicely. He walked gingerly to the first of the four pools of water, the tepid one, and sank in letting his muscles relax. As he moved to progressively hotter pools, which were heated from fires lit below them, he kept thinking about the stories his grandsire had told him about the great armies of King Athel crushing trolls and elves with great batteries of cannon, how the smoke of blasting powder lingered on the field of battle for two full days.

    Stories for an age past. Caerwyn mused, six months before a noble in the foothills of the Ice Spine Mountains had rebelled to King Caer Fynn and assembled over one thousand guns. Things had gone wrong for him from the beginning. First the supply of shot and powder from the East had been sunk by Krakens and Selachian behemoths, so that of his one thousand guns few had more than a handful of shots, then according to those who were there the midday sun was blotted out by dragons and airships that dropped fire, arrows and stones on the rebel forces. The fight was over almost before it began.

    For land forces, the King had brought 300 knights to the fight, less than he moved with for the Winter Solstice celebration in the capital. A friend of Caerwyn was a page at the court and had been there: he spoke of the king banqueting on fresh oysters and lobster brought to him and his knights by airship while the battle went on.
    After the carnage, King Caer Fynn had two of the largest cannons in the enemy army melted down. After that he ordered the surviving leaders of the rebels bound to poles and encased in molds of clay. The melted bronze of the cannon was poured into the molds and now the Northern Gate sported seven new statues; not the best quality cast to be sure, but they made a point. A loud one.

    After soaking for a few minutes in the fourth and hottest pool of water he dove in the cold water of the larger pool, swam its length and got out.
    By the time he had dried off and slipped into his tunic and sandals, Caerwyn had made a decision. He would he would tell his father he needed to leave.
    As he started across the receiving yard, ducking around large carts and piles of ore, coal and slag he was concerned. How would his father react?
    He was not the only son to be sure, his sister Halween was already running the financial side of the business and his two half brother could do almost what he did, still… what if father was opposed to it? Caerwyn would have to…

    He was pulled out of his musing by Crag’s voice
    “Yuung Kai, come.”
    Crag tone was deep but warm, many folks believed that Titans were dumb as cattle; Caerwyn disagreed. He thought the real issue was communication. Crag – and that was not his real name because no human could pronounce Titan words correctly – had very few words in the Common Tongue and Caerwyn had a hard time even understanding the concepts of the Titan. One day he told Crag to remove a pile of slag from the yard. The Titan was severely confused. His people had over 200 different terms for slag depending on – Caerwyn thought he understood – the type of ore involved, its temperature and so forth.

    Caerwyn understood well what the lack of common language could do. Three years before he had met Lhessil, a young elf woman whom he fell hard for. They spent a whole summer together as his father and hers discussed business. He had learned some of the Old Tongue but never enough for a real conversation.

    “Crag, I am going to see my father, but how may I….”
    “Krag knoow, young Kai soon go.”
    “What? I…”
    “Yuung Kai speak than come see Krag. Go”
    Caerwyn walked away on edge with the odd sensation that Crag knew better than himself what was going on. He climbed the four steps to his father office and walked into the room where his sister Halween and his father were looking over account ledgers. Halween was lithe and tall, with a round pleasant face and a very white complexion, set off by her dark hair and eyes, she moved graciously but could become short when things took too long and people did not operate to her standards. He could remember her doing it when she was just ten years old. After their mother died of hacking cough Halween took on the role of organizer, first of him and then progressively of everything else.
    His father had greyed out now that he had almost sixty winters on him: he looked the way an old sea lion was in children stories, gruff and with big mustaches. His large calloused hands an odd match to the thin parchment scrolls of the ledgers. His sister was speaking:
    “So, if we move forward the payment on the ore by three weeks we can save over two hundred silver in the next three years.”
    “Mmm.. that would… oh Cai is the gun cast?”
    “Yes father, it is curing now. Hello sister.”
    “Hello Cai.”
    “Father I was wondering if I could speak to you.”
    Halween made to leave the room but Caerwyn motioned for her to stay “Wait I think you should stay, this is important to you too. I have been thinking about the business. And, well … as you both know there have been less and less orders and … well I think that Halween and my two brothers, you know… they could… I mean I am not…”
    His father turned to Halween and spoke “Damn daughter it looks like you won the bet. He really is going.”
    “It was plain to see” the young woman said.
    Caerwyn looked to both of them with what – he later reflected – must have been the stupidest expression ever “What? How? What do you mean bet?”
    “You have been unhappy here for a while, we both saw it.” His father said while crossing the room to the strongbox.
    “I am not elated you are leaving, but I cannot say I did not feel the same when I was your age. But those were different times, lots of work, lots of business. I’ll be sad to see you go.”
    “Father… I”
    “You have letters and numbers down almost as well as your sister, you even chew some of the Old Tongue. But… you will do what you must. You are like your mother was in this.” The older man offered Caerwyn a leather pouch, which was clinking.
    “It is only 150 silvers – that is all I can afford”
    “This is more than I thought …”
    “You worked hard and this is less than you deserve, but I also want you to take your great-grand sire sword. It is a good weapon.”
    “How can I thank you?”
    “Be safe and remember that this is always your home; whenever you choose to come back you are welcome.”
    Halween jumped in “Well, I guess we shall have to set up for a go away dinner. I’ll tell the cook” and she briskly moved across the room and left. Caerwyn could have sworn her eyes were moist.

    He took his leave from his father and crossed again the yard to speak with Crag. He was in a state of mixed elation and disbelief. The Titan was sitting beside a pile of slag he had been heating and cooling for the past few weeks.
    Father allowed Crag free rein with his hobbies as he had been with the family for five generations. When Titans grew old – that was past 300 years – they were pulled from combat duty and assigned to important business to help out. Crag had come to the foundry and had been a fixture here ever since.

    Crag saw him from afar and waved him over, then started to rummage in the slag pile and pulled out something black and shiny out of it. Once he was close enough Caerwyn saw it was a piece of body armor. It consisted of two plates, front and back, hinged together by smaller pieces of the same metal.
    “Take, good” said the Titan
    “Is this…”
    Croíthe miotal
    “So the heart of the metal…. You made this from your metal?”
    The Titan nodded “Good and strong”
    Caerwyn picked up the armor, which was the lightest metal he had ever lifted and yet when he tried he could not bend it at all. He looked back at the Titan and said: “I don’t know how to thank you.”
    “No thank. Use.” After which, as he often did when he thought he had exhausted a task or conversation, Crag went back to doing what next was on his list.

    The rest of the day passed in a flurry of organization and action at the foundry. Caerwyn’s father had given the day off to all of the crew and ordered Chawai, the cook from the Eastern Empire to set up a feast for that evening, neighbors and friends were invited.
    Crag dug a fire pit where the cooks lowered two sucking pigs wrapped in clay and salt. Large sides of beef were laid side up on metal grills to a large tall fire in the way of the outriders from the western plains.
    But, the capital was the most important port of the kingdom so fish was prominent on the menu: large moon-fish were stuffed with herbs and lathered in oil, ready to be thrown to roast on long grills, skewers of squid and crab jostled for position with chickens on spits and cubes of pork.

    Come the sixth bell everyone was sitting down at long harvest tables borrowed from the nearby inn within the yard. Wine and ale came first along with starters of fresh and grilled vegetables mixed with octopus, clams and sea urchin. After that fresh white cheese and vine leaves stuffed with meat or fish were passed around, followed by crusty bread, olives and quails.
    Old Daffyd raised his cup and in his best foundry floor baritone spoke “Chawai, it is very well that you prepared food for the youngsters and the ladies, but we also have men here. Where is the meat?”
    That brought a roar of laughter and a quick response from the diminutive Easterner: “Meat is coming but as much as you eat, no wonder you cannot please the ladies later on.”

    Almost as if that had been the moment the serving girls had waited for roast beef and clay-baked pig made its appearance all laden on thick slices of hardy journey bread, so that the juices would not be lost. Baked roots and salads of herbs followed.
    Later in the evening Caerwyn, as he was licking honey and ground almonds off of his fingers from the local sweet cakes, looked around with a pang of melancholy. It is true then… I am going.

    The morning after he woke up with a decent headache but not a terrible one. He dressed in his travel tunic and walked into the kitchen where Chawai put under his nose a big bowl of porridge laden with pieces of roast pig, lentils and peas along with a glass of his ‘headache brew.’ Caerwyn from experience knew it tasted like the inside of an old glove but it worked so it downed it first and quickly chased it with the porridge.
    As he was halfway through his breakfast the cook came up with a small package of victuals.
    “Here, travel food. It will keep. Dried beef, nuts and dried fruit and journey bread.”
    “Thank you my friend.”
    “Mmm.. young men must go but they should be well prepared.” He said somewhat criptically and went back into the kitchen where he began to harass a scullery boy over some cut of meat that was not up to his standard.

    Caerwyn said his goodbyes quickly to all and walked to the large yard gate with is father and sister. Somewhat out of character they both hugged him and as he was walking down the main road he turned and was surprised to see them both still there.

    Within the hour he was at the port. Port was a diminutive term: the bay held more than a hundred crafts from small squid boats rowed out by two men to the hulking trade ships of the Eastern Empire, each raising six large masts. In between were sleek war galleys, crewed by the kingdom’s seafaring men of the Blood Reef and the fast crafts of the Southern Islands from where the hugely expensive spices and precious stones came. Caerwyn reflected that a full cargo from one of those ships could well weigh less that 500 pounds and yet fetch many times more than the loads of timber and wheat from much larger ships.
    Speed was the name of the game if you carried cinnamon, pepper or emeralds and so the Southerners built their ships with that in mind.

    The young man made his way through the press of the quayside: a thousand voices and a hundred languages seemed to chase one another in a tiny space, the small cobblestone streets above which four and five storey building towered gave way to a large space just before the docks where trade of all sorts was in full swing. The port market was not the only or the even the larger market of the capital but it certainly was the most colorful. In a corner stood two Easterners, armor merchants haggling with a Hoarfrost warrior over a plate mail suit. The hulking warrior was less than impressed judging from the laughter he let out and how he shook his long braided red hair. Near them was an old lady frying small squid and fish in a cook pot: she was making a brisk business with a group of Southern Island merchants dressed in their colorful robes and turbans and next a farmer from the valleys north of the city was selling his honey and wax. Beside them and all along the quay were hundreds of hawkers, merchants, beggars, onlookers and travellers.

    Caerwyn finally found an inn that he had visited recently where they served a brew from the Southern Islands: a seed roasted and then ground fine was covered with boiling water and spices were added. The drink took time to drink as one had to allow for the finely ground matter to settle at the bottom of the glass and infuse the water.

    Caerwyn was enjoying the dried fruit that the serving maid had brought him when a voice from the next table brought him out of his daydreams.
    “You enjoy qahwah?” said a man in a caftan and turban. The man’s clothes were a riot of horizontal multi-colored lines, his boots were emerald green with gold cloth and his turban was red and black. His face was open and kind. His skin the color of old wood, with the sign of the sun and sea on it but his smile showed perfectly even and white teeth.
    “Yes, I do. Is that strange?”
    The man moved his right arm in a slow half circle around the porch of the inn where no other city man was sitting.
    “I had never noticed I was the only one here from the Kingdom.”
    “A man who does not notice differences of skin and garb… It speaks well for you young man.”
    “Are we not all the same under the skin?”
    “Ah! A man of letters and philosophy to quote the great philosopher Agoras over qahwah!” the man smiled again and continued “But I forget my manners, I am Azim ibn Salaf ibn Walid of the city of Al-Murat; but call me Azim.”
    “I am Caerwyn, son of Darfynn, of the city at least until today.”
    “An interesting turn of phrase, young man. May I ask you to elaborate?”

    Over the next half hour Caerwyn told the man what had happened the day before and the reasons why he thought he should leave. Azim seldom interrupted but when he did he asked point questions. When Caerwyn was finished the Southerner sipped more of his drink, thought for a few moment and then said:
    “Young man, I may have an offer for you.”
     
  2. Reserved after TL;DR
     
  3. Ask suzanne to work together
     
  4. Not too bad a read, you could've thrown in a bit more matter about cai's leaving dinner conversation & interactions rather than just details about food tho as some constructive critism but overall it's a interesting way to give a point of view on kaw. 7/10 Stars :)