Wings of Fire: Dragons, Steel, and Pom-Poms

XIII - Foreign Bolters

>Within a tavern, Safe Harbor_

Castle Archer Guardsman Robin sat upon a rickety old stool, and stared listlessly down at a carven wooden cup half-full with some lukewarm bitter-tasting herbal tea he didn't really care about enough to remember the name of.

He was having one of 'those' moments. Those times when you've caught a break, but are too tired and too bored to really want to do or think about anything, and wind up sitting or standing around doing- and thinking- about exactly nothing except experiencing the evergoing march of time. Whether you know you have better things to do or not.

The establishment he was currently resting in was one of the city's longer-running taverns, never particularly busy, but popular among members of the Castle Archer Guard due to its proximity to the Safehold. The family who owned were amicable enough, and the place almost perpetually smelled a strange and somewhat off-putting mixture of citrus, alcohol, and various teas after the most common drinks served.

He sat alone on his table, there were few other people present in the relatively small room with him. All of them paid little mind to one another. It was towards the end of the day, but most city-dwellers at this time would be working their various jobs at this hour. If not, they were no doubt distracted by the foreigner's presence.

Robin was tired. A whole inferno of a lot of stuff had happened these last few days, but little of it directly had to do with him, to be frank. He and his fellow ballista-operating guards, who weren't present with him in the tavern, had spent a significant portion of their time since the thwarted attack being drilled by the Castle-ballista guard commander to improve their effectiveness, efficiency, and especially speed loading and unloading spears from the launchers; arming the heavy machine; as well as testing and retesting their aiming arithmetic and instincts against flying targets.

If Robin didn't know any better, he might just sympathize with the slowly spreading rumors which suggested their commander was 'inspired' to these drills after they had been upstaged so severely by the foreigner's ship-mounted air defenses, but those were just that: Rumors.

The sound of a small bell tinkling and an old wooden door swinging open behind him caught his attention, and he swiveled his head around and peered over his own shoulder with one eye.

Coming through the tavern door was a somewhat bedraggled looking fellow that Robin vaguely recognized to be one of the secretaries that worked in the Safehold. He almost stumbled across the small room to the tender's counter, drawing the attention of the rest of the tavern's patrons as he went.

He ordered a cup of something strong-smelling from the young tender currently wiping down dishes at the counter after a cursory good evening, passed some nickel coinage to the young man after he had drawn some liquid from a small barrel into another carven cup, and trudged through the lantern-lit room until he sat down with a grunt at a thin table adjacent to Robin's own.

"You seem tired." Robin greeted.

The probable secretary let out a loud sound that was simultaneously a sigh and a groan and slumped his shoulders over, burying his own face in his hands.

"These foreigners are lunatics." He said.

He took a draw of his drink, wincing as he did so. Before turning to face him. "I spent all day these last couple days with them. You wanna know what they're up to? Because it's scorching weird. You remember the Night Dragons they slew?"

Robin nodded. How could he forget?

"Well here's what they did. They tracked them all down, where they fell, that is. Then they tied the corpses to these... moving metal machine things- I think that's what they are, yeah... and then they dragged them over near where they're setting up all those tents and stuff. That's weird enough in itself. Why would you do that with a dead dragon? If you slew a dragon, what would you do with it?"