Fellis Dain dropped his entire body weight backward onto his heels, throwing the full leverage of his back and thighs into the waxed whipping line looped around his left forearm.
Beneath the floorboards, the cord went taut as an iron wire.
Above the planks, the unbraced front leg of the eight-foot pine drying shelf snapped inward with a violent, splintering crack. The rough timber leg folded beneath the frame like a dry twig under an ore cart wheel, instantly stripping the massive four-tiered rack of its upright balance point.
The shelf tilted forty degrees in half a heartbeat.
The heavy, unfastened cargo on the upper tiers. Twenty rusted cast-iron pump valves, three cracked clay animal fat crocks. A heap of rusted pipe collars—slid off the pine boards in an avalanche of iron and shattered pottery. The clatter of falling metal echoed off the limestone rafters like a landslide in a gravel pit.
The collapsing shelf slammed directly into the back of Tesk’s knees.
The thief let out a strangled, breathless shriek as his legs were swept out from under him. He pitched backward into the falling debris, his spine slamming against the tilted frame, his arms flailing wildly as three heavy iron pump valves crashed across his shins.
