Senior Guard Keld looked from Jon Hale’s calm face to the curved iron hook welded onto the side of Alden Bram’s heavy ash measuring rod, then up at the second pine collar-frame where a single three-inch wedge of dry pine held back the sagging canvas-and-board lagging above his thighs.
A faint, grim ghost of a sapper’s comprehension crossed the old sergeant’s weathered face. Instead of lunging forward or shouting an alarm, Keld shifted his shoulders squarely back against the stout eight-by-eight oak lintel abutting the granite cellar pier, tucked his gauntleted elbows tight against his ribs, and drew his steel-greaved legs together in the centre of the drift floor.
“You have a master builder’s eye, old man,” Keld rasped to Alden Bram, tilting his sallet helm back an inch so his chin cleared his steel gorget. “When I drove that single pine shim behind the second upright at the third bell, I knew the wet pea-gravel under the courtyard cobbles would slide clean to the waist-line if anyone kicked the post out—while the oak lintel against the pier holds a two-foot chimney straight to the top of the stones.”
“Then keep your fingers inside your elbow-guards and your chin up, Sergeant,” Alden Bram rumbled, setting the bull’s-eye lantern on the bottom rung of the pine ladder and taking a two-handed grip on his iron-shod ash rod. “Because I shimmed the stall sleeper-beam above your head with greased oak before we came down, the floorboards won’t drop a quarter-inch when the…
