Shame had a taste. It was the metallic taste of his own blood, the bland taste of "the brown" they were once again forced to eat, and the bitter aftertaste of powerlessness. A week had passed since the attack by the Black Hounds, a week lived under the yoke of Koss. Groleau's henchman came every afternoon, a smug smirk plastered on his lips, to supervise their work. He did nothing, content to sit on a barrel, criticize their slowness, and harass the younger ones. At the end of the day, he would inspect the production of "Gnappers," take four out of every five without a word, and leave whistling.
For Tony, each visit was torture, a deafening echo of his past in Myr. To yield the fruit of his labor to a brutal master, to see his intelligence exploited under the threat of violence, awoke in him a rage so deep it became a physical pain. He had believed himself free, but he had simply changed masters. Groleau was the slave trader, Koss the foreman, and the twin's bandaged, twisted fingers were the silent hostage that guaranteed his submission.
One night, the decision, which had ripened in hatred and humiliation, became a certainty. While the den was plunged into a restless silence, Tony slipped outside. He did not head to the docks to think, but into the guts of a district devastated by the fires of the Sack of the city. He stopped before the ruins of a small septry, of which only a few blackened walls remained. At the spot where the altar had once stood, he cleared away the rubble and lifted a flat stone. Underneath, wrapped in a linen cloth, lay his single gold dragon.
The coin, struck with the profile of a long-forgotten Targaryen king, seemed to absorb the faint moonlight, shining with a cold promise. It was his ticket out, his emergency fund, the symbol of a possible future far from this hell. By unearthing it, he was renouncing that future. He was not using it to flee, but to finance his war. It was a point of no return. He closed his palm over the coin, the heavy, cold metal anchoring his resolve. He would not buy his freedom. He would forge it in fire and blood.
The following days, he spent his time on the Street of Steel, not as a customer, but as a predator on the hunt. He observed the forges, evaluating not the size of the shop or the number of apprentices, but the quality of the work and the desperation of the master. He found his target at the end of the day: "The Northern Forge," a small workshop squeezed between two loud armorers. The master, Theron, a gruff Northerner, was a man in his fifties, massive and bearded, whose hands, though calloused, wielded the hammer with an artist's grace. His works, displayed on a dusty stand, were of a remarkable finesse, but his shop was empty. He was a craftsman of quality in a world that demanded quantity.
Tony waited for closing time. As Theron was locking his door, a small figure materialized in the alley's shadow.
"Master Theron?"
The smith turned, his hand on the handle of a hammer hanging from his belt. He sized Tony up with suspicion. "What do you want, boy? I don't give handouts."
Tony was not deterred. He pulled a slate and a piece of chalk from his satchel. "I don't want money. I want to ask you a technical question."
Before the smith's incredulous gaze, he crouched down and began to draw. It was not a toy, nor a conventional weapon. It was an industrial diagram, a cross-section of a bloomery furnace, but with subtle modifications: a dual air injection from synchronized bellows, precise control of the ore and charcoal layers.
"In theory," Tony said, his calm voice a stark contrast to the complexity of his drawing, "if we increase the furnace's temperature while controlling the carbon supply, we can force the iron to absorb just enough carbon to transform it, not into brittle cast iron, but into a harder, more resilient metal. Steel. Is that possible in a forge of this size?"
Theron remained silent for a long moment. He bent over, his eyes squinting to examine the drawing. He was no scholar, but he knew fire and metal like no one else. He saw the audacity, the almost supernatural logic of what this boy had just drawn. It was a method for producing steel, simplified yet coherent, the likes of which he had never seen.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice hoarser than usual.
It was then that Tony produced the gold dragon and placed it on a nearby anvil. The coin shone with an almost insolent gleam in the twilight.
"I am your next investor. Half of this gold is for you, the other half is for expenses. This is our starting fund. You will use it to discreetly buy everything we need: the best iron ore, quality yew wood for bows, strong leather, things I can't acquire without attracting, let's say, unwanted attention. You will be my only contact with the outside world. In exchange for your work, your absolute silence, and your loyalty, when we are finished, this forge and the technique to produce steel will be yours, along with other things that will change your life. You will become the most respected craftsman on this street, and a wealthy man, if you have a mind for business."
Theron looked at the gold, then at the child's serious face, and then back at the diagram on the slate. He could kill him, take the coin, and forget this conversation. But the drawing... the drawing promised something far more precious than gold (it was of an absurd complexity). Knowledge. A legacy. And then there was his Northerner's honor.
"Show me what you want to build. It will cost me nothing," he finally said, unlocking the door to his forge.
---
The days that followed were a plunge into secret, feverish labor. Every night, after Koss had left and The Gnats had fallen asleep, Tony would slip out of the den. He would arrive through the forge's backyard, moving like a shadow after ensuring the alley was deserted. The forge became their sanctuary, a hell of heat and glowing metal where an object that should never have existed in this era was being materialized. Tony's project was one of outrageous ambition: a repeating crossbow, designed not as a siege weapon, but as a tactical assault crossbow, as he liked to call it.
The Chassis was the first revolution. "We forget wood," Tony had decreed. "It warps, it breaks. We need a skeleton, a structure that can handle phenomenal power without flinching. We need steel."
For a week, that was all they did. Under Tony's direction, Theron modified his forge. They spent nights sweating before the fire, working the bellows, layering the charcoal and iron. Their first attempts produced brittle cast iron. But Tony adjusted the variables, until they managed to forge billets of a raw, but genuine, steel. Theron, seeing the metal bend without breaking, now looked at Tony with a mixture of awe and veneration. From these billets, they forged the chassis. It was a skeletal structure, with a pistol grip and a shoulder stock. To Theron, it was like assembling the bones of a creature from another world.
The Prod, or the bow, was the heart of the power. Theron, guided by Tony's calculations, forged thin steel plates which he hammered and quenched separately before laminating them into a composite bow, short but incredibly powerful. Drawing it by hand was impossible.
The Steel String was the next heresy, according to Theron. He spent several nights drawing heated steel bars into ever-finer wires, which he then braided under Tony's direction into a cable of phenomenal strength.
But what truly astounded him was the Firing Mechanism; it was the soul of the machine. Inspired by the principles of a Chu Ko Nu, which he had never heard of but which Tony claimed was far superior, it was a marvel. A long lever under the chassis operated a system of gears that, in a single motion, drew the bow, dropped a bolt from the magazine, and reset the trigger. That famous **Magazine** was a detachable metal box containing a leaf spring that pushed fifteen bolts upward. The **Bolts** themselves were deadly works of art: an iron-weighted wooden shaft, a hardened steel "bodkin" point, and sheet metal fletching for perfect aerodynamics.
---
While by night Tony became the master of a secret forge, by day he played the role of a submissive slave. But this double life came at a cost. To maintain the secret, he imposed an iron discipline on himself. He deprived himself to save money, eating even less than his meager share of "the brown," claiming a lack of appetite to give his leftovers to the younger ones. His face grew gaunt, his ribs more prominent under his tunic. He was being consumed from within by the flame of his project.
Lira was the first to notice. Her survival instinct was her most developed sense. She saw the new exhaustion that shadowed Tony's eyes, a fatigue that was not from the work in their den. She saw the forge soot under his fingernails, different from the usual grime. She saw him disappear after everyone else had fallen asleep and return just before dawn. She saw him refuse food, his body thinning to an angular silhouette held together by sheer will. She was worried, suspicious, but she said nothing. Ever since the demonstration of the trap, she had learned one thing about Tony: his madness had a purpose. Her silence was a mark of faith, a leash she granted him, hoping he would not lead them to their ruin.
---
As time went on, the nights in the forge became a litany of failures and small victories. The first composite steel bow, improperly tempered, shattered during a stress test, sending a shard of metal whistling inches past Theron's head. The first loading mechanism jammed three times out of five. But with each failure, Tony analyzed, redesigned, recalculated. He was not frustrated. This was a process. This was science.
And finally, after almost two months of clandestine work, the weapon was finished. They called it "The Black Widow." In the forge's cellar, late at night, they conducted the first full test. The target was an old oak door, reinforced with a stolen coat of mail. Tony shouldered the crossbow. The stock settled perfectly, the balance was astonishing.
He aimed. There were no distinct shots. He worked the lever, again and again, as fast as he could. The cellar filled with a dry, mechanical sound, a metallic tearing, *clack-clack-clack-clack*, a non-stop burst that lasted less than ten seconds. The magazine was empty.
The silence that followed was deafening. The oak door was a porcupine of bolts. The coat of mail was riddled, the iron rings shattered, pierced like parchment. Theron, the old smith, stared at the scene, the hammer falling from his hand. He was pale, his eyes wide with a mixture of admiration and sacred horror. They hadn't created a weapon. They had created a massacre.
Tony lowered the crossbow, the smell of steel and tallow filling his nostrils. There was no joy or excitement in his eyes. Just a cold, dark satisfaction. The shame had been melted down. The fear had been quenched. The vengeance had been forged. The weapon was ready. The war could begin.