A hammer struck cold iron with a hollow, dying ring that carried over the lower smelting terraces.
Caleb Conway stood upon the wooden walkway overlooking the eastern gully, watching thick black smoke pour from the chimneys of the lower foundry. Below him sprawled twenty open brick furnaces, where dozens of disciples in soot stained aprons hauled tongs and stoked burning coals. Upon the wooden storage racks lining the shop floor rested hundreds of identical iron broadswords, stamped with the crude wave crest of the Iron Wave Brotherhood before being loaded onto handcarts bound for the sect armory.
Every outer disciple understood that the brotherhood maintained a stranglehold over the lower paths, but few bothered to examine the financial engine sustaining their numbers.
Extorting ten Mer
