The passage was not an unbroken open highway. At eighty-five yards from the entrance, they met the first major collapse. An eight-foot section of the limestone roof had dropped, blocking the passage with shattered pale limestone blocks the size of beer barrels.
Eren Tal didn’t waste breath cursing. He set his lantern on a rock shelf, dropped his canvas tool roll. Then he pulled out two ten-ton screw jacks and four blocks of seasoned white oak. ‘Pass the crowbar, Pella,’ Eren grunted, worming his upper body into the narrow crawlspace between the rubble and the ceiling.
Working in the cramped, damp space with silent, razor-sharp smooth speed, Eren levered the largest fallen block aside, wedged two heavy oak timbers beneath the unstable roof stratum. Then he set an iron screw jack against the hanging lip. He cranked the handle with a twelve-inch steel bar until the threads bit into the rock with a dull, dry crunch.
Fifty yards further along, at the second fracture, they built a timber stacked timber frame from six notched oak baulks. They locked the fractured ceiling into place like the timbering of a deep coal mine. Within forty minutes, Eren had opened a thirty-eight-inch clear headroom throughout both intervals. It was tight for a heavy cart driver, but perfectly adequate for a swift runner carrying an oilskin dispatch.
