The rhythmic roar of heavy-duty labor echoed across Grey Crag like the beating of a giant clockwork heart.
From the high granite towers of the central keep down to the riverfront docks, every forge, kiln, and workshop burned through the freezing twilight.
At Foundry Two, the great undershot waterwheel turned steadily in its icy raceway. It drove the massive leather bellows of the hard dark metal small roof-dome fire.
White-hot melted rock waste bubbled and hissed as dwarven pourers in thick hide aprons guided heavy graphite crucibles. It cast bronze rotor housings and steel receiver sleeves with disciplined haste.
At Forge Three, four boring lathes turned without pause.
Their carbon-steel reamers sprayed showers of pale blue curls into trays of smoking lard oil as another set of six cold-drawn barrels was trued and rifled.
Across the brick yard, the rhythmic, bone-jarring thunder of three high-pressure trip-hammers shook the frozen ground.
Toby Karr and thirty teenage apprentice machinists worked in rotating crews, feeding long strips of snapped iron plate beneath the heavy falling dies.
