Ivara Quill reached the southern drift of Tier Four three paces behind Geth Marr. Her boots skidded across a six-inch slurry of crushed limestone powder and rotten-egg drainage water.
The drift was thirty feet wide and nine feet high. Its roof supported by was heavy square sets of seasoned white oak that had held the mountain at bay for twenty seasons. But at the southern working face, the timber had failed catastrophically. The main thirty-foot top door beam—a huge baulk of twelve-inch squared oak heavy with iron flitch-plates—had fractured clean through the middle, its stringy core splintered into jagged, foot-long teeth like a shattered bone.
Beneath the buckled top door beam lay a slab of dense, crystal-clear blue limestone weighing at least three tons. It had split cleanly from the hanging wall along a natural white spar-stone rock layer seam. He dropped four feet onto the floor of the drift.
And pinned beneath the leading edge of that stone, from the mid-thigh down, lay Jarek.
The veteran driller was lying flat on his back in the cold slurry, his white wool cap knocked off into the mud. It exposed a scalp covered in lime dust and dark, weeping scrapes. His hands were clawed into the wet shale, his fingers bleeding where he had tried to claw his legs free. His teeth were gritted with such violent force that pink, bloody foam bubbled over his lower lip with every ragged breath out.
