The upright shaft dropped twelve feet into the frozen ground with the cold and exact care of a well bore.
Two scouts, their forearms wrapped in wet hemp to stifle skin friction against the shale. They lifted the final wicker basket of blue clay to the surface. Below them, at the bottom of the cramped four-foot shaft, Pei Jing stood balanced upon the balls of his feet. His knees were bent at twenty degrees. He took in the faint micro-shakes rising through the leftover layer of shale.
The rock separating the two tunnels was less than nine inches thick.
Through that thin crust of tightly packed settled mud came the heavy, labored panting of six men, the scrape of iron shovel pans against broken stone. The rank, greasy smell of unwashed horsehide jackets smeared with rancid sheep fat.
Pei Jing didn’t light a candle. In an enclosed gallery, an open flame burned up three cubic feet of oxygen every ten minutes and ruined night-adapted rhodopsin in the eyes. He operated entirely by sound shape and tactile shear.
Behind him in the upright shaft, Sergeant Zhao gripped the handle of a heavy iron sledge, its striking face padded with three layers of vulcanized cowhide.
