Chapter 4: Weapon Making

Byrin leaves Selmas outside the forge after giving him some more tips on how to be a good Warrior (“Protein, Selmas, it’s a gift from the Gods!”). Selmas creeps inside, finding his apron and slipping it on over his head. He had left his teacher deep in focus reforging a battle ax, but he has no idea if his absence has been noticed or not.

He goes to the woodpile to build up the fire, which is when his teacher, without even turning around, says, “Good fight?”

Selmas sighs. Looks like he’s been caught, then.

“One casualty,” he responds, stacking firewood into his arms and dumping them onto the coals underneath the lit forge. “We have three new ships though. The Bizantin left them in the harbor.”

“Bizant again?” his teacher asks. “That’s the second time in a month.”

“They won’t try a third,” Selmas says confidently. “Never mind that their navy is reduced by three; they must be embarrassed.”

His teacher shakes his head, continuing to examine the edge of the ax. “Embarrassment means nothing to the desperate.”

His teacher is always saying things like that. Zehan is more than just a weaponsmith; he’s also the smartest person Selmas has ever met. Despite not being a Warrior, he’s strongly built, solid and square, his fists like war-hammers, but with the most delicate fingers. He can hone an arrow so precisely that it could shoot the wings off of a sparrow if given to the right archer. So far, he’s the closest that Selmas can get to being a Warrior without being accepted by the Bloodstone.

Zehan wasn’t either. His teacher doesn’t like telling the story, so Selmas has never heard it from him. Zehan doesn’t seem bitter about it, though. He claims that his work in the forge is just as important as fighting for their people.

Selmas doesn’t know if he believes that. Weapons are nice, of course, but what good are swords when your hands can kill just as well?

“Sharpen this,” his teacher says, handing the handle of the ax over to Selmas, who takes it and goes over to the large whetstone they have at the back of the shop. “You were gone for an hour. I need to begin the fletching; the Chieftain said they were almost out of arrows.”

“Sorry,” Selmas mutters, scraping the whetstone over the edge of the ax a bit sullenly.

Zehan gives him a long look, then collects the empty arrow shafts, feathers, and string, pulling a seat up beside Selmas’ work. “What did you notice?”

His teacher may just be humoring him, but Selmas doesn’t care. “Our ranks are split too much,” he says. “We start out by making formational attacks, but everything falls apart too quickly. If we just stayed together, we’d be much more efficient.”

“Hmm,” Zehan hums as he ties feathers to wood, trimming down the ends with a thin pair of sheers. “And do you intend to propose this to the Chieftain?”

“No,” Selmas snorts. “She wouldn’t listen.”

“Sometimes, no matter how loudly you yell, people choose not to,” Zehan says. “It’s up to you to find another way to speak.”

Selmas rolls his eyes. “Do you even know what that means?”

Zehan doesn’t answer him, just gives a pointed glance toward the ax, which Selmas had stopped sharpening as he talked, so he picks it back up again, grinding away the rough bits of the metal until the ax is a smooth, deadly ridge.

Zehan inspects his work. “Very good.” He gathers the fletched arrows into a quiver and slides the ax head into a leather sheath. “Do you want to deliver these, or should I?”

“You,” Selmas decides. “I’ve had enough of Warriors for one day.”

Zehan nods. “Mind the store, then. Don’t go running off.”

“Where would I go?” Selmas mumbles to himself.

Minding the shop isn’t the worst part of his job, though it is the most boring; the worst part of his job is splitting firewood, actually. Selmas always gets splinters. Sometimes he can convince Byrin to do it for him, but most of the time, his cousin is off training or fighting or patrolling the borders to keep out the other clans.

The Bloodstone is more of a curse than a blessing in that way, Selmas supposes. It may give them excellent fighting prowess, but it also draws the attention of numerous other groups who want to take the Stone’s power for themselves. Selmas doesn’t even know if it would work the same for them, or if only the Alyrisin are able to draw power from the Stone, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever get a chance to find out. The possibility of any one clan taking the Stone for themselves is almost nothing.

There are eight clans on the Crescent; a long, curved stretch of land, bordered on one side by sea and the other by a desert so large that no one has ever crossed it and returned. Mordyn is the biggest of the eight, Wister the smallest. Alyris is right in the middle, size-wise, and they wouldn’t be nearly as powerful as they are without the Bloodstone. As it is, Alyris has few friends and many enemies, and every other clan is constantly making grabs for their strength. It’s why they only have their village and a bit of the surrounding forest; all of their forces are poured into defense. They don’t have nearly enough time to expand their clan.

Selmas rearranges the tools, pokes at the coals in the fire, sweeps the floor. He doesn’t even know why they have a store. Besides the few foreign customers they get if anyone is passing nearby, they only make weapons for the Warriors, and mend cookware, sometimes.

He takes out his notebook, laying it out on the counter to study what he had discovered while watching from the bush. He had drawn a few diagrams, but they’re messy, just formations he has already seen and committed to memory. A note further down the page is what catches his eye.

‘Bizantin seem distracted; fighting is not as direct as the last attack was. Bloodshed is weak, chaos is high.”

Selmas frowns at the note. He remembers writing it down, but had gotten caught before he could really think about it. Now that he recalls, it does appear that the battle was a lot more chaotic than usual, the Bizantin splitting their ranks almost immediately, rather than making a coherent attack.

He sighs, placing his chin in his palm, flicking at the edge of a notebook page with his finger. With the unexpected attack and Yun’s problem, it’s been a very strange day.

Almost as if the Gods themselves heard this thought, Selmas makes out voices, coming from the front of the forge.

“Is anyone there? You’d better come out!”