The Arbalest should show up in stores eventually. It's one of the semi-rare ones. Not too rare really but each faction I think is only allowed to spawn a certain number of ranged items within a random chance. So if all you see right now is the more common stuff, the rare stuff won't spawn until the next time they restock.
Don't look at price. Look at actual damage + speed for DPS. Even the bent/cracked weapons can still be good if you don't have/can't afford the better ones yet.
If you don't have the optional patch yet, check
this out. You only need the item_kinds1.txt file. You don't need it and I highly recommend you back up the original file of course, but it adds some of my fixes to archery, which I feel are very useful especially for balancing out the "cheap" weapons, among other things. They are fairly minor really and you might not notice anything much. But it will make the lower level bows and crossbows more useful. It becomes a question of utility (speed+accuracy) versus raw power.