289AC
Gerald smiled as he prepared the cotton and beeswax mixture to stuff into his ears. This was always the best part of testing the new molds, dozens of cannons would be fired off all day long into targets on the side of the mountain. So far not a one had managed it without a misfire, over the five previous test days, and the criteria that Young Arthur had set was to stand up to a day of reasonably continuous fire reliably, so as to not fail in the midst of battle.
He was a bit surprised to note that the young genius himself had come around and waved him over even as the first of the cannon-thunder started further up the Dragonmont.
"Arthur. I'm surprised to see you up and about. Done knocking down the keep yet?"
"I don't know where the Dragons hid their godsdamned loot Gerald, but I would bet my wealth it isn't under the Drum. Every wall that wasn't keeping the ceiling up, every empty space. Hell, we dug a few skeletons up, but not a single coin or scrap of any value."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Gerald said honestly, he was looking forward to reforging Valyrian steel if he got the chance, there was just so much that could be done with it. "Are you going to continue searching?"
"Aye, The Targayens left treasure everywhere they ever lived, and here, in their oldest homeland? I suspect one bigger than most. I just won't personally be overseeing the search anymore. There are more pressing matters."
"Such as?"
"Cannons."
"Ah." the two turned up towards the volcano above, where the air quivered with the relentless cannon fire of the thirty or so molds being tested today. "Do you think any of them will make it?"
"I don't know." the boy said, glancing up to the slope. "But there are more interesting developments at play, follow me."
Gerald felt a flash of disappointment at not getting to observe the barrage but followed nonetheless.
"You know how Sig screwed up the powder he was making last week?" the boy asked genially, leading him over to one of the various stone storage lockers around their testing range.
"I can remember, yes." if he were still an alchemist he would have had the boy whipped, but then, he was a chemist now. "Did you find a use for it?"
"Oh did I ever." he watched as the child reached down, picking up what appeared to be a large hardened paper construction with a fuse at the back. "I had never quite figure out how to do rockets before this, but now? Now we have flares."
"Flares?"
"Ah, sorry, they had mostly been theoretical before. Just uh, watch this."
The boy set the thing at the base of a steep ramp, before lighting the fuse and scrabbling back away. "You may want to cover your ears."
Sure enough, just as he clamped down hard on his head, the thing went tearing up into the sky, making a fizzling noise. After a moment, it burst into a dull red light with a loud crack. Its remnants seemed to hang in the air.
"Is that supposed to go towards the enemy?" even now he could imagine the damage strapping a bomb to the front might do.
"No, it's not as impressive in the daylight, but it's intended to hang in the air and give us light to fight by at night. I should be able to use these to make night attacks a possibility. They'll also probably scare the shite out of people the first time they see them."
"All of your "inventions" do that." the word always felt strange on his tongue, but he had gotten used to it after Arthur insisted. The boy was always creating words to describe his creations.
"Yeah well, the important thing is that we need to figure out exactly how Sig screwed it up. If we can replicate it we can do both Flares and rockets. Those are the ones you point towards the enemy."
"Like Mortars but faster?" Gerald always wondered why the boy didn't share the mortars with his father, always so focused on cannons instead. The things already made catapults irrelevant.
"Exactly." Arthur nodded, a wide smile crossing his face, and Gerald sighed.
'Guess I have to go track down Sig.'