The ride back from Ceprano was a long, suffocating silence. Bastiano slumped in his saddle, muttering prayers under his breath and occasionally shaking his head as if to ward off a nightmare. He was a man staring at a mountain he had been ordered to move. Alessandro, however, was quiet for a different reason. His mind was on fire, running frantic calculations, discarding impossible scenarios, and probing the edges of a problem that seemed absolute.
Back within the crumbling security of Rocca Falcone's walls, he gathered his key lieutenants in the great hall: Bastiano, the voice of tradition and caution, and Enzo, the voice of the common man and practicality. He laid out the smith's demand in stark terms.
"Ten bars of quality iron. A wagonload of oak or beech."
Enzo's newfound hope visibly deflated. The man who had faced down the swamp with vigor now looked utterly defeated. "My lord," he said, his voice rough with despair, "you might as well have asked for the moon and stars. Ten bars of iron? That is a lord's ransom. The Count of Ceccano might have that much in his entire armory. And the oak…" He gestured vaguely towards the mountains. "The good hardwood grows on the high slopes. Those lands belong to the Baroncelli family. Their foresters would hang us for poaching a single tree."
"Can we buy the iron?" Alessandro asked, knowing the answer.
Bastiano gave a short, bitter laugh. "With what, lord? The few silver coins in your father's chest would not buy a single bar. They are for grain, for salt, for an emergency."
"This is an emergency," Alessandro countered, though he knew the point was moot. "Can we mine it?"
"The old men say there is no iron in these hills," Enzo said, shaking his head. "And if there were, who knows how to find it? Who knows how to build a furnace to smelt it? That is magic for monks and dwarves, not for us."
They were trapped. Every logical path was a dead end, blocked by their own crushing poverty. Frustrated, Alessandro dismissed them and retreated to the top of the tower, the cold wind doing nothing to cool the frantic heat in his mind. He stared out at his valley, a kingdom of mud and rock. There had to be an answer.
He closed his eyes, pushing past his own thoughts, and delved deep into the inherited memories of the boy named Alessandro. He wasn't looking for a plan; he was looking for a map, for a forgotten corner of the valley, for a local legend. A memory surfaced, vague and tinged with childhood fear: a place on the far western ridge his father had forbidden him to go near. A tumble of massive, unnatural stones overgrown with ivy and ancient trees. The peasants had a name for it. Le Ossa dei Giganti. The Giant's Bones. They said it was haunted, a place where the Vecchioni—the Old Ones—still walked on moonless nights.
Leo's mind seized on the words. Vecchioni. Old Ones. Not demons or spirits. Just… old. And what was older and more giant in this land than Rome? The "bones" weren't from giants. They were the ruins of a Roman structure. A villa rustica, perhaps, or a small military outpost. And the Romans, with their vast empire and superior engineering, used iron. They used it lavishly, as structural support, as pins, as clamps, in places medieval builders used only stone and mortar.
A wild, brilliant hope ignited within him.
He stormed back down into the hall where Bastiano and Enzo were glumly sharing a cup of watered wine.
"The Giant's Bones," Alessandro said, his eyes alight with a fervor that startled them.
Bastiano immediately made a sign to ward off evil. "My lord, it is a cursed place! A place of pagan spirits!"
"It is a place of stone and wood, built by our ancestors," Alessandro declared, his voice ringing with authority. "The 'giants' were Romans. And the Romans built with iron. We are not going there to disturb spirits. We are going there to scavenge."
The idea was met with horrified silence. To them, he was suggesting they raid a graveyard. It took an hour of impassioned argument, of blending logic with command, of shaming their fear while acknowledging it, before he won a reluctant, terrified agreement.
The next morning, Alessandro led a small party of five, including a still-skeptical Enzo, towards the western ridge. As they climbed, the landscape grew wilder. They finally arrived at the site, and it was more impressive than the memories suggested.
Massive, square-cut foundation stones formed the outline of a great rectangular building. Broken marble columns, their surfaces covered in moss, lay half-buried in the earth like fallen sentinels. A profound silence, broken only by the rustling wind, pervaded the place. The men bunched together, their eyes wide, seeing ghosts in every shadow.
For hours, they found nothing but stone, dirt, and shards of ancient pottery. The men's fear began to curdle back into resentment.
"It is as we said, lord," Enzo grumbled, wiping sweat from his brow. "Only stones and ghosts."
But Alessandro wasn't looking at the surface. He was thinking like an engineer from the future. Where was the greatest stress point in a Roman structure? An archway. He scanned the ruins and found what he was looking for: a massive, collapsed gatehouse, a chaotic pile of gargantuan stone blocks.
"Here," he commanded. "Dig here."
With immense reluctance, the men began to lever away the smaller rocks. It was back-breaking work. Just as their spirits were about to break entirely, one of their pry bars struck something that was not stone. It rang out with a deep, metallic clang.
A frantic energy seized them. They worked with renewed purpose, clearing away the rubble. And then they saw it. It was not a bar, but something far better. A huge, thick iron pin, nearly as long as a short sword and as thick as a hammer's handle, embedded deep between two colossal blocks of granite. It was rusted, but its core was solid. A quick search revealed another. And another. The entire archway had been clamped together with them.
They had found their iron.
Alessandro felt a surge of triumph. He looked up, his gaze falling upon the center of the old villa's courtyard. Growing there, undisturbed for centuries, were a dozen ancient, gnarled oak trees, their branches thick and their wood dense.
He had found the hardwood.
He had the resources. They were here. Buried under a thousand years of fear and tons of rock. He had solved the riddle. Now, the real, brutal work was about to begin.