(As recounted by Aurelio)
The old man poured two cups of wine, the rich, purple liquid catching the firelight. He pushed one towards me.
"You cannot understand the forge without first feeling the heat," he began, his voice low. "Giovanni's garrison was not a place of rest. It was a tool, sharpened for a single purpose. And we… we were the raw ore, about to be melted down."
He opened Gerald's journal to a page filled not with words, but with a dark, furious scribble of charcoal—a cage.
"Gerald did not write of this place for many years. The memory was a poison in him. But when he did, he called it 'The Iron Cradle.' For him, it was where his old life was strangled. For me… it was where a new one was born, screaming."
— Memory —
The rain began as they marched from the Crow's Nest, a cold, weeping drizzle that seemed to mourn the dead they left behind in a shallow, common grave. Aurelio's hands were raw from digging, the phantom feel of Luca's cold arm and Benito's stiff tunic lingering on his skin. The mud of the road was different from the mud of the groves; it was hungry, pulling at his boots, trying to swallow him whole.
He walked in a column of ghosts. Silvio marched ahead, his shoulders hunched against the weather and the memory of his own humiliation. Marco walked beside him, occasionally shooting a venomous glance back at Aurelio, as if his survival was a personal insult. And at the rear, dragged by a chain, was the storm—Gerald. His wound had been roughly bandaged, but his spirit was untamed. Every so often, he would strain against his bonds, rattling the chain, and let loose a stream of guttural Norse that needed no translation. His eyes, when they found Aurelio's, held a promise written in ice and fire.
You. I will kill you.
After two days, they saw it. It was not a castle of song and story. It was a fist of grey stone slammed into the side of a mountain pass, commanding a view of the valley below. No banners flew. No trumpets announced their arrival. It was silent, watchful, and utterly grim. A single, rusted iron portcullis opened like a maw to swallow them.
This was Giovanni's garrison. The men called it L'Incudine—The Anvil.
The courtyard was vast, dominated at its center by a massive, ancient black anvil, scarred by centuries of hammer blows and stained dark by things other than soot. Around it, the life of the fortress moved with a quiet, lethal rhythm. Men in well-maintained mail drilled in perfect unison. Archers loosed arrows at straw targets with a monotonous thwack. The air smelled of forge-smoke, honed steel, and cold stone. There was no laughter. No chatter. Only the sound of a weapon being perpetually sharpened.
Aurelio was assigned to a barren cell-like room with Silvio and Marco. As he dropped his meager pack, a grizzled woman with arms corded with muscle and a soot-smudged face approached. This was Donata, the master blacksmith.
"New stock?" she said, her voice a low rasp. Her eyes, sharp as awls, scanned the three of them, lingering on Aurelio's slender frame. "Stringy. But the stringy ones are sometimes the toughest." She tossed a worn wooden practice sword at his feet. "The Commander will see you on the training ground at first light. Try not to break."
The night was long and cold. Silvio lay on his pallet, staring at the ceiling. "He's going to break us, you know," he whispered into the dark. "Giovanni. He breaks everyone. He makes them into something… else."
Marco grunted from his corner. "Better than being crow-food like Luca."
Aurelio said nothing. He just listened to the distant, rhythmic clang of a hammer from Donata's forge, a sound that would become the heartbeat of his new life.
Dawn came, grey and unforgiving. In the shadow of the great anvil, Giovanni waited. He did not greet Aurelio. He simply drew his own blunted training sword.
"Attack me."
Aurelio hesitated, then lunged. It was a clumsy, desperate thrust. Giovanni didn't parry. He sidestepped, and the pommel of his sword cracked into Aurelio's ribs. He fell, gasping.
"Again."
This went on for an hour. Lunge, fall. Swing, fall. Aurelio was covered in bruises, his pride in tatters. Giovanni was not a teacher; he was a sculptor, and his medium was pain.
Finally, as Aurelio lay wheezing on the wet stones, Giovanni stood over him.
"You fight like you are still in your grove," the Commander said, his voice flat. "You think this is about fairness. About courage." He leaned down, his cold eyes boring into Aurelio's. "The trap at the Crow's Nest. Why did it work?"
"Because… your men were hidden," Aurelio gasped.
"No." The word was a slap. "It worked because of you. Because you and your friends were weak. Your terror was a scent on the wind. Your panic was a song that called the wolves. Your fear, boy, was the most effective weapon I deployed that night. Never forget it."
The truth landed not like a blow, but like a slow-acting poison, seeping into Aurelio's soul. He had not been a soldier. He had been bait. His value had been his own helplessness.
Later that day, he watched as Gerald was dragged, still fighting, into Giovanni's command chamber—a sparse room with a single map-covered table. Curious, and driven by a morbid need to understand the other half of Giovanni's trap, Aurelio lingered by the door, hidden in shadow.
He saw Gerald, battered but unbowed, spit at Giovanni's boots.
"Drepið mig, argh!" he snarled. Kill me, coward!
Giovanni did not react. He circled the young Viking like a wolf assessing a strange new beast.
"Your father was Eirik 'Sea-Serpent,' Jarl of the Danes," Giovanni stated, his tone conversational. "A great man. A unifying voice."
Gerald froze, the rage in his eyes flickering with shock.
"He was murdered," Giovanni continued softly. "Not in fair combat. Poisoned. By a Spanish fanatic named Godbrand." He paused, letting the name hang in the air. "A man who, my sources tell me, was seen taking gold from a French agent with a peculiar sigil—a golden serpent."
Aurelio saw the confusion now, warring with the hate in Gerald's face. The world was suddenly larger, more complicated, than a simple grudge against Italians.
"You are not my enemy, boy," Giovanni said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. "You are a weapon that was pointed in my direction. I wish to know the hand that holds the hilt."
Just then, a courier, mud-spattered and weary, was ushered in. He handed Giovanni a sealed scroll. The Commander broke the seal, his eyes scanning the contents. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He glanced at his spymaster, a gaunt, silent man named Lorenzo who stood in the corner.
"The wind shifts," Giovanni murmured, too low for Gerald to hear. "The Cabal makes its move on the French throne. The pawns are in position. It seems our Spanish 'allies' are more concerned with their own games." He looked from the scroll to Gerald, then out the window, towards the north. "The game has just become much larger."
After Gerald was dragged away, bewildered and silent, Giovanni found Aurelio in the courtyard, staring at the great anvil.
"The world is not what you thought, is it?" Giovanni said. It was not a question. "You have a choice, grove-rat. I can have you discharged. You can return to your trees, and live with the knowledge that your friends died for nothing more than your freedom. Or…" He gestured to the training grounds, where Riccio the archer was calmly planting arrow after arrow into the heart of a target. "You can stay. You can learn. You can learn why they died, and perhaps ensure it was not entirely in vain."
Aurelio looked at his hands. They were soft no longer, but torn and bruised. He looked towards the stockade, where Gerald's furious silhouette was visible behind the bars. He thought of Giovanni's words: Your fear was my weapon.
He walked over to the rack of practice swords. His body screamed in protest. His soul felt heavy with a new, dreadful understanding.
He picked up the sword.
— Present —
Aurelio drained his cup. The memory of that choice was still vivid on his face.
"I picked up the sword," he repeated softly. "And in doing so, I laid down the boy I had been. Giovanni's truth was a terrible thing to learn. But it was the first real lesson of the war."
He looked at me, his eyes ancient.
"The hand holding the hilt… we would spend years trying to find it. And the cost…" He trailed off, his gaze drifting back to the fire. "The cost was more than any of us could have imagined."