The North-South Gallery smelled of crushed stone, cold underground water, and the pungent sulfur fumes of portable heating forges.
Along the western flank of the row of stone pillars, sixty tunnel diggers of the Conclave Backup worked under the flickering glare of pitch torches. They were burly men recruited from the iron-mines of the inside, their muscular torsos clad in greased ox-hide jerkins, their arms spattered with stone dust. At their feet lay wicker baskets filled with hardened steel wedges, heavy sledgehammers, and air-powered star-drills powered by flexible leather hoses connected to a hand-pumped air pump cart.
Before them rose the stone base of the Ninth Warden. A massive stone block of dark sea-hard speckled rock eight arm-lengths square and five arm-lengths high, bearing upon its shoulders a fifty-arm-length statue of an ancient tide-keeper leaning upon an unstrung stone bow.
“Drive the wedges into the base seam!” barked Sapper-Captain Meng, swinging a brass-tipped measuring rod against a timber balk. His beard was white with limestone powder. His eyes bloodshot from smoke. “The Scholar has promised eighty gold coins for every foot of stone stand we undercut! If the base crumbles, the statue tips forward and smashes the eastern gate! Strike, you dogs! Strike with full shoulders!”
