Chapter 65: Ch. 065 – (Now) Target practice

Jon was sitting on the manor’s porch shortly after sunrise, as the first of his volunteers approached, with his feet up on the railing while he leaned back in his chair. Beside his boots, hung his saddlebags, and in those bags, among other things, were the focus of his lessons today: brands. He’d brought half a dozen smaller short barrels with him, even though he didn’t have much in the way of powder or shot. 

The good stuff that he and his friends had been able to steal from dwarves on some of their raids was too valuable to waste, and the other stuff - well, it was needed elsewhere. Today’s lesson wasn’t about learning to use a dwarven wand the dwarvish way, though, it was about learning how to do it ways they would never be able to.

Beside him stood a platter of fresh baked rolls ready to hand out to the hungry crowd. Jon didn’t know how much of his popularity was related to the cause, and how much to free food, so for now he was leaving nothing to chance. Miss Marne had dressed him down quite thoroughly when he’d made noises about serving a public breakfast again. 

“We are not a public house, Lord Shaw,” she’d berated him in private this morning when he’d asked about setting up a larger spread like they had the other day.

She had a point about preserving the dignity of the house and all of that. He didn’t think about such things as much as he should, but he also seemed to think generosity was a great deal more important than she did. In the end, they’d compromised, and she’d let the kitchen staff prepare him a little something. A ‘restrained welcome’ she’d called it. 

The wording made Jon smile. He might be good at a lot of things, but he’d never have half the wit she did.

As soon as the first arrivals were halfway to the porch, Jon got up and went out to meet them. “Good morning,” he yelled out. “Thank you so much for joining me today.” Then he went around shaking hands and handing out the meager breakfast while he answered their questions. Yes, he had fought fifty men last night. No, he hand’t killed them all, not quite. Yes, he really was going to go fight a war with the king himself. 

Each time this cycle of questions ended, another group would show up, and it would start all over again. Jon didn’t mind. This was hardly the first time he’d seen this sort of scene play out in the last few months, and what they were in no rush to do what they needed to do. 

By the time everyone had gathered, he had twice as many people gathered as he did the day before, but only a handful of them had any elemental talents. That was to be expected. The blood was thin this far out in the country. The only real surprise was that Claire had showed up, and in the years that he’d been gone she’d discovered a minor gift for fire. 

Seeing her walk up had been a hell of a surprise, but finding out that she was a fire blooded was shocking, and it flooded his mind with all the strange spring fantasies that young Jonathan had spent so much time thinking about. 

Jon didn’t say any of that, though. He just answered, “Wow - that’s incredible. I suppose we’ll see what you can do shortly.” It put his teeth on edge to see her like this, but the last thing he was going to do was turn anyone away. It sent the wrong message, and more importantly, it wasted a recruit that might have real talent. He had no idea how he would get Elise to get on board with that, of course, but he’d think of something. 

“So who here knows how a brand works?” Jon asked as he led the group back to the orchard, where they could try a few things without getting anyone hurt.

“A dwarf points it at you, and you die,” one of the older boys said, drawing a few laughs. 

“That’s true,” Jon agreed, “But do you know how it works? What gives it the power to shoot you dead?” 

“They harness earth magic through secret dwarven runes carved into the inside of the metal stick,” one man shouted. 

“Nah - my Pa said it’s not like that at all,” a much younger man said. “He said that a dwarvish wand will suck your soul out so they can feast on it in the underworld, and because your soul—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the first man retorted. “It sucks something out of your body? How could it even—-”

“Course it does,” the younger man answered again. Jon could see now that he was really just a boy that was tall for his age. “Why else would it leave a hole? That hole is the spot where they pull your soul out when they—-”

“Gentlemen, Please,” Jon yelled, quashing the argument before it could get them further off track. “I want to hear what everyone thinks. These are all opinions.” 

After that, the answer came fast and furious. They were as varied as the people talking, though. Fire and earth magic were popular. Dwarvish runes also featured into most answer, but everything from demons to beams of pure death and even disintegration were brought up until Jon finally brought it to a stop. 

“All good ideas,” he said, nodding as he opened the breach of a brand and began to pass a few of the unloaded ones around. “Dwarves don’t have any magic, though. Not runes, or fire or anything.”

“Nawwww…” one boy said in obvious disbelief. “If that were true, then they wouldn’t have no trains or anything. Those things have powerful magic in them, for sure.”  

“No magic in those either, but they’re a bit more complicated, so we’re not going to talk about them today,” Jon said as the crowd quieted like they were about to learn some deep magical secrets. “Today, all we're learning about is simple brand. It’s just a metal tube, a wood stock, and a few other bits.” 

Jon showed that the one in his hand was completely empty, and then he forced a bit of clay he’d gathered earlier in it and rammed it home.

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“They load it with clay?” the particularly talkative boy asked. 

“No - if you’re trying to kill someone, you load it with lead. This is just practice, though, so clay will work as well as anything. You need something that is just big enough to fill all the gaps, and clay does a good job at that.” 

Then without any warning, he brought the weapon up, pointed it at a piece of firewood he’d set on top of a fence post, and poured a moderate jolt of fire into the chamber. The result was instantaneous, and the improvised bullet shot out with a muffled bang, hitting the piece of wood and knocking it over, to the surprise of everyone assembled. 

“Now you try,” he said, handing the weapon to a blond man who’d earlier told him he was an air blooded. 

Put on the spot, the man obeyed nervously, and following Jon’s instructions he reloaded the weapon. His movements were awkward and unpracticed, but Jon encouraged him every step of the way, and when he was finally ready to take aim Jon said “okay now, I want you to take just as much air as you can hold at once, and then dump it all into the chamber at once.” 

“The chamber?” he asked, confused by the strange term. 

“This part right here,” Jon said, tapping it lightly. The blond refocused, and Jon could see he was doing his best. Air bloods with only a little talent rarely practiced it, so what was Child’s play for Jon at this point took real concentration on their part as they drew power from the surrounding air. 

Finally, after a few seconds, there was a pop. It didn’t hit anything, but it had moved faster than Jon could see, so as far as he was concerned, that was a good start, and he clapped the man on the back. “Good job,” he congratulated him. “You fired your first brand.” 

“I did?” he asked, uncertainly. “I didn’t really feel like anything.” 

“We’ll, if you don’t believe me, you can check for yourself that it’s empty.” Jon said, taking the weapon from him and opening the chamber, so everyone could indeed see that the impromptu projectile  was gone. “There you go - you’ve done something no dwarf ever could. You fired a brand without their dwarf powder.” 

“Why don’t we just use that powder stuff?” One of the talentless volunteers asked. “Then we could all practice our aim.” 

“One day that’s exactly what we’ll do,” Jon nodded, “But for now it’s too expensive and too hard to come by. The dwarves make their ammunition by the ton from rare and valuable materials, but we have the advantage, because we can pull ours straight from the world around us. It’s one of the reasons I’m not afraid to face them.”

Almost everyone seemed satisfied by that explanation, and though the people without any elemental blood usually didn’t care too much about the lack of it, while Jon helped everyone practice and drill, he could see the jealousy in the faces of the powerless. For someone who was teased as he’d grown up fire blooded, that was a delicious irony that only he could really appreciate it. 

Claire and a few of the others picked up on it pretty quick, but a couple of the fire bloods struggled, even though they obviously had the talent. Jon wasn’t sure why, but generally, air bloods he taught these lessons to seemed to have an easier job than fire bloods. A dwarf could probably explain it to him, and tell him something about adding more air versus heating up the air that was already in the weapon, but Jon was never going to ask them for anything but their surrender ever again. 

“How did you get to be so good at this,” A young boy asked him after he failed to shoot the clay out of the weapon for like the tenth time in a row. 

“I used it every day like my life depended on it,” Jon said simply, “because it did.” The lad was probably looking for Jon to elaborate on that more, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned his attention back to the weapon and had him try again. 

A couple of hours later, everyone finally had the trick down. For the first time in weeks, Jon had more shooters than he had weapons to give them. This afternoon they might try with actual lead and better targets, but first he’d have to find something for everyone else to do. 

Then, while he was going through the list in his head of everything that needed to get done, he heard an unmistakable sound: a train whistle. Jon kept his smile on, even though it grew tight, but he set down the brand he was holding. 

“Sorry everyone,” but I need to take care of something. 

“Do you need our help?” an older man with a look of determination on his face asked. Jon looked around and saw the sentiment reflected in a number of other faces, including Claire’s, surprisingly. 

Help would be great. That’s what he wanted to say, but no one here was ready to help him yet, so instead he answered, “Nah - I’ve got this,” as nonchalantly as possible. I’ll have this all wrapped up in a couple of hours, and we can work on something else, so maybe next time you can help me. 

He must not have looked as sure as he wanted to, because there were some doubtful looks as he walked to his horse and mounted him, but there was nothing for it. Help would have been great, but with the roads the way they were, it really wasn’t a surprise that Rian and the rest hadn’t made it here yet. It wasn’t like they could just dump the wagons because of some bad roads. 

No, he had this, he reassured himself. With as much fire as there was in a steam engine, he doubted there was much he couldn’t fight, however exhausting it was going to be.

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