It was the smoke that drew me in.

  Not the thick black pillar of a fresh raid or wildfire—this was older, settled. A haze that clung low to the forest floor. When I followed it, the smell told me more than my eyes did: coal dust, scorched leather, forge ash.

  I found the caravan half-buried in ivy and mud.

  Three wagons. Two burnt to cinders, axles shattered, wood warped by heat. The third was half-intact—its wheels broken, but its frame and canvas walls mostly untouched. The ground was torn and dark, stained by blood long dried.

  A blacksmith’s wagon.

  I could tell from the remnants—twisted tongs, busted barrel bands, a rack of bent chisels. A pair of worn leather aprons, one hung like a flag from a broken crossbeam. Whoever it had belonged to, they’d fought back—and lost.

  I searched the area. Found no bodies. Just drag marks heading toward the treeline. Old. Weeks, maybe months gone. Either the owners escaped… or the forest had taken them.

  I stood there for a long while, the wind brushing past the wreck like a whisper.

  Then I got to work.

  I salvaged everything I could—hinges, clamps, iron pots, a cracked bellows, even a partial anvil sunk into the wagon floor. I replaced one of the rear wheels with a spare from a dead gnomish wagon I’d passed a week before. The second I built myself, lashed together with ironwood struts and layered hide.

  I built a forge-bed inside, a clay-lined hearth with a chimney that rose through the roof like a crowned spine. Hammered plates to reinforce the undercarriage. Strapped hide flaps along the sides to cover the shelves that held my tools.

  I carved small compartments for powder and shot. Hooks for my pistols. A lockbox under the floorboards for coin, lead, and sulfur. And a stand for long-guns when I finally decided to make some.

  I painted over the old runes with charcoal and ash, then etched my own mark onto the side:

  The split circle. Half sun, half moon.

  Halforcen.

  I found a pair of oxen days later—half-wild, grazing near a mossy stream. I brought them down with a sling and salt, then led them back to the wagon with careful hands and whispered words.

  They took to the yoke. Took to me.

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  That night, I lit the forge again. For the first time in years, I had a roof over my head, a fire of my own making, and steel to shape beneath my hands.

  The road became my anvil.

  Wherever I went, I worked. Hammered knives and nails for farming folk. Sold weapon repairs to hunters and patrols. Traded bullets and guns to dwarven scouts and mountain watchmen. I tuned every spring, hand-measured every grain of powder.

  Eventually, I learned to make long-guns from the ones I repaired for my customers.

  I forged my first long-gun barrel from a repurposed length of dwarven-grade pipe—dense and heavy. I filed the bore smooth, slowly and carefully, by hand. I forged the flintlock mechanism piece by piece, matching what I had seen in dwarven hands. The stock I carved from aged ironwood, thick and dark, polished smooth with river stone.

  It took me weeks, but the first time I fired it, the shot rang like thunder.

  The recoil nearly knocked me off my feet.

  Still, it flew straighter than anything I had made before.

  But I wanted better.

  I had heard stories—quiet rumors among dwarven engineers—about barrels that had grooves, spirals etched within. Rifling, they called it. Most dismissed it as myth. But I remembered the diagrams I had once stolen from Caveshield’s workshop, half-finished sketches of twisted grooves and ball patterns.

  So I tried.

  Using a sharpened rod, I etched slow, shallow spirals down the inside of a fresh barrel—painstaking work. My first attempt cracked. The second exploded in the test fire.

  The third?

  The third drove a ball straight through a hanging boar skull at fifty paces—clean.

  The spin gave the shot bite.

  After that, I rifled every long-gun I built.

  I hunted when I needed to, sold furs when the iron was thin. My wolves—Nyx and Fang—ranged ahead of me, catching game or scattering would-be thieves. They were my eyes, my blades in the dark. Their presence kept most trouble away.

  But not all.

  One band of highway raiders thought they could surround me in a mountain pass.

  They had numbers—eight, maybe ten. Rusted sabers, homemade bows, boiled leathers over stolen chainmail. Thought they were wolves.

  They were dogs.

  They came at twilight, blocking the path with felled logs, flanking high on the ridgeline. I saw them before they saw the glint of iron at my hip.

  I let them shout their threats. Demands. Mockery.

  Then I raised my long-gun. Calm. Silent.

  The first shot startled the cliff hawks, echoing through the canyon. One of their archers dropped like a puppet with its strings cut—half his chest torn out by rifled lead.

  The second shot brought down their lead horse—an instant of chaos. Screaming. Movement.

  Nyx hit them from the left, silent and fast, her fangs tearing into the nearest man’s leg. Fang struck from the right, dragging another down into the dirt.

  I drew my pistol. Fired once. A raider spun and hit the ground.

  They tried to retreat. But the path behind them was narrow, and their panic made them clumsy.

  I stepped through the smoke, my hatchet in one hand, reloading the long-gun with the other.

  A voice cried out, “It’s him—the wagon-smith!”

  By then, it was too late.

  Steel rang. Powder roared.

  And when the smoke cleared, I stood alone.

  People started calling me different names depending on who you asked.

  To some, I was the Wagon-Smith.

  To others, the Wild Shootist.

  Among the traders, The Gun Merchant.

  And in hushed tongues of mothers to their children, The Thunder Orc.

  I never corrected them.

  But I never gave a name unless asked directly.

  And even then, only one:

  Garrok.