Reign Of Fayala

Crows

          Kele knocked on the door of the old weathered cabin while Delsin and Jacy waited at the bottom of the tread worn porch steps. Neither Delsin nor Jacy had personally met Jargon but they knew him by reputation. Jargon was a loner, rumored to have a short temper and a predisposition for brawling.  He also ran a distillation process he called a pot-still that produced a potent and illegal drink which he liberally indulged in. 

     It was only a matter of time before the fighting and hard drinking got Jargon crossways with a temple priestess hence his eviction from Bidar.  However ill-disposed his attitude he was also the town blacksmith and a good one at that. According to Kele he was the one that made the musket that convinced the men of Andraste to join the movement.

The door swung open and Jargon, his barrel chested potbellied frame easily filling the door frame, eyed the men on his stoop with suspicion.  Kele took a step back and waited a moment before addressing him, "well you got them finished,  all fifty as we agreed."

"Yeah, I got em, back in the barn," Jargon replied gruffly.

      Kele, Delsin and Jacy followed the thickly built man along a narrow dirt trail into a heavily wooded section of the farm. Here the gigantic old trees still grew, left over from the alien terraforming they towered two hundred feet into the air with trunks twice as wide as a man was tall.  The rusty lantern carried by Jagon creaked as it swung to his pondering gate, its soft glow revealed the presence of a man made structure.  The barn was secreted within the dense, murky part of the wood and one had to know exactly where it was to find it.

Jargon pulled open the buildings rickety double door, stepped into the dank interior and let the three men in before closing it securely behind them. "Back here," he said motioning to a section of the barn where hay bales were stacked high nearly to the roof. He pushed a large wooden bench off to the side and lifted up a door that was rough-cut into the floor.  A ladder led down into an even darker and clammier cellar that had been dug out beneath the barn floor.  Jargon lit a lamp revealing a line of muskets leaning up against the wall.

Kele lifted one of the crudely made weapons, "you're sure these will work?"

Jargon tilted his head to one side, "well that depends."

"What do you mean, depends, depends on what," asked a wary Delsin.

Jargon replied sarcastically, "on how many volleys you expect to get out of them before they fail."

Jacy noticed the redness on the right side of Jargon's on cheek, "is that what happened there?"  He asked pointing to his face.

     "Look," Jargon began, "these muskets are made of scrap iron. I heat the metal up in my forge until it glows bright red. I fold it together and beat it out into flat sheets then roll it over a wooden dowel. Two flat sheets per barrel wrapped in opposite directions with iron straps wrapped around the barrel to hold the sheets tight. I remove the dowel and you have a musket barrel.  Considering the urgency of your request this bid not exactly high quality work if you know what I mean."

    Kele examined the weapons and noted some faults and stresses in the metal.  The barrel was as long as his arm and fixed into a wooden stock by additional metal straps. At one end of the stock was a firing mechanism operated by a flat lever that when pressed released a metal hammer. The hammer struck a small pan that held the powder which ignited the charge inside the barrel propelling the ball out of the opposite end.

"You should get two shots out of a musket," said Jargon, "try a third and, well you're taking your chances that the whole thing might explode."

"Explode!" Exclaimed Delsin.