An obstacle refused to yield to clockwork crushing. Then, the instinct of primitive miners was to use more explosives.
In the forward heading at Milepost Five point two, twenty dwarven pick-masters and shamans stood before the six-hundred-ton iron-hard metal-granite boulder blocking the cutterhead.
High Shaman Gurn of the Lower Veins knelt upon the stone invert. He held a silver ritual bowl filled with goat blood and powdered brimstone. Around him, three apprentice shamans chanted deep-throated prayers to the Slumbering Mountain Titan, pleading for the sacred stone to dissolve.
“Three white goats sacrificed at midnight,” Gurn proclaimed, raising his blood-spattered hands toward the curved rock face.
“Their bones burned in virgin sulfur. The Mountain Father will accept the offering, soften his iron heart, and dissolve this boulder into water.”
Giles Croft walked into the cutter chamber holding his drafting board and a sight level.
He looked at the bowl of goat blood, then at the thirty-foot ball-shaped uneven wedged between the dark rock walls. Then he adjusted his glasses.
“Gurn, goats are ruminant herbivores whose living tissue consists primarily of water, protein, and calcium,” Giles said mildly.
