Stephen Raibeart, a muscle-bound man whose six feet usually dominated every room he occupied, looked up from his anvil briefly, then turned back to his work. His eternally-pricked father's ears had caught the soft footfalls of his eldest daughter over the roar of his furnace, but unfortunately, the girl's elder brother wasn't as aware of his surroundings.
"Papa! I-" the light brown haired girl began, stopping in the archway that separated the hall up to the house from the three sided armory shop. Her brother, who had just drawn the bow that he'd finished and painted the day before, lost focus and let go of the arrow, nearly catching his younger brother, who was on the other side of the shop practicing his calligraphy.
"Saul!" the little boy cried at once, having heard the song of the arrow whistling past his left ear before it struck the wooden beam beyond him. "You about killed me, y'know!"
The holler paused Stephen's punishing of the metal before him, but only for a few moments. After deciding that the metal before him was no longer hot enough to be worked with, he turned slowly to push the still-unrecognizable hunk of metal back into the gaping mouth of the furnace.
"Blame Sarai!" the eldest brother groaned, picking his brooding dark locks off his forehead with the fingers of his barely-calloused left hand. "How many times has Pa told you about sounding off that clarion voice you've got down here?"
"Papa sent me to go get Uncle Iordi, didn't he?" Sarai complained, crossing her arms over her chest as she'd seen her mother do thousands of times. "What'd you think I'd do, twirl about three times and forget?"
"Well, you didn't have to shout," Saul grumbled, turning around to face his sister with a face of frustration. "Wake the dead with that bloody-"
"Language," Stephen rumbled at once, pulling the glowing metal out of the fire and leveling a glare just as hot at his first child.
"Sorry, my lord," Saul mumbled, scrubbing the front of his scalp with his fingers.
"Never mind an arrow about went through my head," the younger boy muttered from across the room.
"He's sorry for that too, aren't you, Saul?" Stephen counseled, still fixing his gaze on Saul's dark eyes.
"Sorry, Sly."
"Now, you figure whether that bow is stiff or not- without braining your brother."
With that, Stephen put the metal back into the fire and reached his arm over to pull at the bellows, causing the furnace to roar into a fiercer life. Saul, meanwhile, stood nearly motionless with the bow, a look of thinly covered disgust on his face. By that time, Iordyn had turned himself sideways in the hallway to scoot past Sarai with a whispered excuse. Spying the arrow stuck fast in the beam and the frustrated young boy, he had to fight to stop himself from laughing.
"If I may- good archers must learn to shoot no matter what is going on around them," he offered calmly. "It wouldn't do, in a fight, to be put off mark by a whoop or a holler."
Saul finally took his hand out of his hair and made a show of looking at the handhold of the bow. "Thanks, Uncle Iordi, but I'm not supposed to be an-"
"Now, Saul, listen to your uncle," Stephen counseled, this time putting his hammer down completely. "Learn to use what you make. Nothing worse than an ignorant pounder- you want to be like that, you go down the street and apprentice yourself to that woman smith or the farrier, make horse shoes with them- not that there's anything wrong with female smiths, eh, Sarai?"
"No, my lord," Sarai responded obediently, although her wrinkled nose spoke quite to the contrary.
"Go on, Uncle Iordi, tell us how to properly shoot a bow," Stephen encouraged, taking the metal back out of the fire and picking up his hammer to begin his work again.
"What were you aiming for in the first place, Saul?" Iordyn asked, maneuvering around the various pieces of equipment in the shop until he arrived at Saul's side. The younger brother, relatively convinced that he was safe, took up his quill and began writing.
Saul rubbed the knuckles of his left hand on the inside of his right elbow joint. "I wasn't really gonna let go," he admitted. "I was just trying to see if there were still stiff spots, like the last one. I... um... don't make really good bows."
"This is a standard longbow, then," Iordyn nodded.
"I have to do longbows before I can do composite, Papa says, even though nobody-"
"I do," Iordyn interjected immediately. "I love longbows. Their simplicity is their strength; composite bows and crossbows may be more in demand now-a-days, but you'll find that inexperienced archers will be returning every few years, because they're both easy to ruin. Longbows, not so much, especially simple yew longbows. In your father's family, a child of five years inherited a yew bow that survived two sisters before him, and had it not been for an unfortunate accident, he might still have had it to give to his child."
"Before you say something silly," Stephen mentioned as he continued to turn and shape the metal before him, "Your Uncle Iordi was that child. Split bulls' eyes in two, at your age. Proved to your grandmother definitively that not all of her sons were meant to be swordsmen."
"What happened to that bow, Uncle Iordi?" Sarai asked, leaning on the side of the arch.
"Your grandfather broke it, is what happened," Stephen scoffed. "I made that bow at six or seven years- one of the first things I ever made, actually. So I was plenty angry myself."
"You made bows before swords, Papa?" Saul piped up, leaning around Iordyn to look at his father's back.
"What might a child get hold of first, wood or metal?" Stephen replied simply. "Your grandfather was a brave soldier and brilliant tactician, but can't smith worth my spit. You have things a bit differently, as your father is already appointed by the Dragons to craft their weapons and armor. Now, listen to your uncle, boy."
"Now, the first thing you need to realize is that a bow is just as dangerous as a bared sword," Iordyn counseled, gently taking the weapon out of Saul's hands. "Never direct a readied bow toward a living target unless you mean to kill it- even a jest could be mortal."
"Should I move?" the youngest brother asked, picking his head up to look at his uncle. "I can go upstairs with Mum and Salone."
"You're just looking for an excuse to muck about in the kitchen with the women, Sly; stop it," Saul sighed, as though he'd said the same thing hundreds of times.
"Well, I'm not pounding metal or stringing bows; I'm trying to get this 'M' right," the boy retorted, hurt.
"Sylvester, stay where you are," Stephen muttered, not even casting a glance up at his youngest son. "None of us are going to hurt you, and your brother's right. You must stop skirt-fasting yourself and learn to carry yourself among men. Especially as a... scribe."
"Yes, my lord," the hazel eyed boy replied, settling back into his place and rearranging his things.
"Do you want a hand with the 'M'?" Sarai asked, genuinely concerned.
"Let him alone, little raven," Stephen warned as he paused to look over his shoulder at her. "He'll get it on his own."
Sarai shifted uncomfortably in the archway for a few moments, a frown printed plainly on her face.
The smith turned his upper body so that his daughter could see more of his consoling countenance. "I know it pains you, but Sly's not going to have his big sister when the priests look upon his writing, is he?"
"No, my lord," Sarai sighed unhappily, trying not to look as dejected.
"So, as I said, the bow is dangerous. If you're just testing it, choose an area where no living target exists," Iordyn continued. "Sylvester counts as a live target, as does your father and Sarai. So we only have one corner left. I'm aiming for the heart of the easternmost post." Reaching over and picking up one of the roughly made arrows that lay on the low table next to Saul, Iordyn expertly raised the bow and set the arrow. At once, he felt two unyielding spots in the bow, but figured that Stephen would feel that for himself when he tried the bow later. "Now, as I wait here, I know that your father is putting that metal back into the fire, that Sylvester is practicing the curl at the end of that 'M,' and that Sarai is still shifting somewhat impatiently behind me. I'm focused on my target, but I'm very aware of my surroundings. I have to be; I cannot afford to be surprised. If you aim purposefully, focus, and remain as aware of all that works either with or against you as you can be, you should hit your mark with relatively little error-"
"Sarai!" Stephen suddenly called, snapping his eldest daughter to attention at once. He tossed his head toward Saul, and her feet flew toward her brother without delay.
Iordyn released the arrow just as Sarai grabbed Saul's shoulders. Saul jumped slightly, but Iordyn's arrow sang directly into the center of the easternmost beam. Relaxing his stance, he sighed deeply, then turned to his slightly miffed nephew.
"There. Do you see, Saul?"
"That's enough, Uncle Iordi," Stephen pronounced, pulling the metal out of the fire and putting it into a stone trough on the other side of the furnace. "I've two arrows in my shop beams, now. Sarai, Saul, Sylvester, begone with you. See if lunch is ready."
Surprised at the sudden change, Sylvester wasn't sure if he should move or not. Only when Sarai hustled away from Saul to help him gather his things did he snap into motion.
"Bye, Uncle Iordi, bye, Papa," she said in her sharp, but sweet voice. "If it's not ready, should I send the boys back down?"
"If it's not ready, you get about the business of helping your mother get it ready," Stephen replied. "Saul can feed the dog and check her pen. And let Sylvester keep to his own studies, please, little raven."
"Yes, my lord," Sarai said, hustling her brothers up the narrow stone hall to the house's entrance.
After the children's footsteps had faded into relative silence, leaving behind it the crackle of the flame and the sounds of the city beyond the open part of the shop, Iordyn put the bow back down on the table.
"Papa broke that bow over my back for a reason- do you ever tell them what that reason was?"
"They wouldn't understand. He's much better now as a grandfather than he was as a father," Stephen retorted with a trace of bitterness, walking over to the posts and pulling the arrows out. "You've got two reasons to stay with Suze and I, and the children. One, Saul can't craft or shoot a bow to save his soul. Always one or two stiff spots, because he hasn't any patience- never mind the flimsy arrows he puts out. Two, your summons just came. Messenger brought it down here to me instead of to the front door for Suze to swoon at. Papa said in his letter that he'd crow on you, and he did just that; stunned me but good. I thought he'd actually realized a thing or two since the old days, but-"
"He did the right thing," Iordyn nodded. "I had thought the guard that had been present at the time would have been the one to say something, but- it's just as well."
"You're plenty of things, but a murderer isn't one of them," the blacksmith frowned as he turned to face his younger brother. "If it were Aaron or Adassa, then perhaps, but you- no. I can't conceive of it. And a Purple Dragon- how? How could it happen?"
"I killed him. I wasn't aiming for him, but all the same," Iordyn admitted, looking down at Saul's bow wistfully. "He was part of a guard that was to transport a gargantuan Dragonborn to this place, where the retired Battlemage Ranclyffe was waiting for him, alive. The Dragonborn is sick or crazy or something, and was threatening the commanding officer- one Shesua."
"Oh, I know that one," Stephen mused, moving forward to lean on the beam that held up the center of the shop. "Not one for backing down, once challenged. Most times that's a good thing, but sometimes, it's not."
"Well, on the last of his days, he was staring down a creature better than twice his size," Iordyn snorted. "It was his duty, even if it looked damnably impossible. As the Dragonborn moved to harm him, I put a warning shot between the two of them. Shesua put his weapon to the male's neck, but fearless, the creature moved forward, so I shot again, intending to wound him. A Tiefling sojourning with the party managed to kick the other guard in the way of my shot, and the arrow that would have only hit the back of the Dragonborn's shoulder split the man's head in two. So true was my aim that anybody would think I'd meant to do it."
"But you didn't," Stephen noted at once. "Had the Tiefling held his place, the arrow would have met its true mark. You're a dedicant of the bow under the guidance of Lathander himself. Your shots don't stray."
"Her place, you mean. She's worse than ever we were told by our teachers that Tieflings could be. Bitter, rebellious, perpetually angry- and that mouth!" Iordyn shook his head and seated himself on the dirt floor.
"Well, there's the case right there," Stephen shrugged, feeling himself relax. "The Tiefling is to blame. You didn't really kill that guard- who ought to have been wearing his helmet anyway. Arrows to the head are what helmets are for."
"I did kill him, however much I didn't intend to," Iordyn corrected. "Lathander doesn't guide shots into the innocent. I was in the wrong, and I should be punished."
"Iordi, you don't know the man," Stephen argued. "It's possible he could have deserved to die. And irrespective of his moral standing, the fact of the matter is that the Tiefling put him in the way of your shot. You intended to hit one creature and she pushed another into your path. That's the entire case, right there. Any judge will put her to death, not you."
"What judge will hang a woman?" Iordyn countered. "The worst she'd ever see would be some years in jail- and that would be if they decided that she was at fault at all. The arrow was mine, Stephen. I killed him, and that's that- what's more, you cannot imply that Lathander doomed the man to death with my bow. You know that's against everything we were ever taught."
At this, Stephen scoffed quietly, pushing himself away from the pillar. "There's much about 'Lathander' that no one will teach you, Iordi. You'll have to do some research. Some reading and thinking. And you'll have to do it on your own."
A pleasantly round woman with light brown hair that fell in happy ringlets appeared just inside of the arch to the shop, a smirk stealing across her face. "My, but isn't this a serious conversation- much too weighty for a delicate lady to hear. You'll have to hush it up, or I won't be able to tell you that lunch is ready."
"Oh, Lady Susanna!" Iordyn said, jumping to his feet at once. "Sorry to be sitting; I didn't hear you-"
"Please, please, as though Suze's never seen her brother sit in her presence before," Stephen laughed. "Every time you visit us, you pretend as though we'd been just married, never mind the four kids that do nothing but get older, stronger, wider and taller every time you look at them."
"Five, Stevie, so bless the gods," the woman replied quietly, her smirk widening into a smile. "Surprise."
And Stephen was truly surprised. He blinked as he slowly tilted his head from one side to the other, trying to wrap his mind around the news.
"Anyway, lunch is ready; leave whatever you're yammering about here, and come up."
"It- eh- it's me," Iordyn sighed. "You should know; I'm to be tried for murder-"
"Nonsense," Susanna interrupted, turning around as though the report were nothing serious. "Whatever poor soul met the wrong end of your arrow likely deserved it. Come along, now, it's pumpkin soup, so you know Saul will want to eat it all before you even get to the table."
Iordyn was rooted to the ground, stunned at Susanna's cavalier attitude. Stephen, rolling his eyes at his brother, simply put the retrieved arrows down on the table, put firm hands to his brother's shoulder blades and pushed him toward the arch after his wife.
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