The recoil that erupted from the split forge-seam of the near recess guide-rod was not a clean sky-high blade that could be blocked with a staff. It was a point-blank explosion of white-hot copper vapor, jagged bell-bronze shrapnel, and reversing magnetic flux triggered. Just then, the four-breath commutation bar dead-shorted against Vaska Ren’s iron wedge.
Because the eight-inch iron wedge had to be held at a precise thirty-degree angle inside the lap-joint during the first heartbeat of the short-circuit to keep the softened bronze plates from snapping back over the edge, Vaska Ren had kept his horsehide-gloved left hand wrapped tightly around the upper shank of the wedge for one full breath after his mallet struck.
At the end of that first breath, as the ten-yard central hall toward the lower returning hub dropped wide open in front of Seyun’s boots, the back-pressure inside the box-shaped housing blew the outer bronze pipe rim apart like a fragmentation grenade.
BOOM!
A jagged, three-inch shard of cast bell-bronze snapped off the upper lip of the housing at the exact instant the magnetic flux reversed along the iron wedge. Instead of spitting the wedge outward into the snow, the reversed flux and the exploding pipe rim slammed the backup iron retaining pin and a twisted spike of bronze shrapnel straight downward through the fourth and fifth hand bones of Vaska Ren’s gloved left hand. Driving the iron spike through flesh, bone, and horsehide leather and pinning his left palm two inches deep into…
