For two full days—the remainder of Day 121 and the entirety of Day 122—the mountain faded into a narrow world of lantern light, flying ice chips, and the rhythmic ring of steel against stone.
Voss took the lead at the ice wall, demonstrating the careful discipline of an underground stone-cutter. Instead of hacking wildly at the center of the three-pace blue plug, which would only blunt their picks and waste precious energy, he used his flat steel chisel and a three-pound iron hammer to channel upright relief grooves along both granite walls where the ice met the stone.
“Ice expands when it freezes,” Voss explained between strikes, his breath puffing in rhythmic white bursts. “It grips the granite like glue. If you cut the sides free first, the whole center block loses its footing. Then one tap in the middle brings down fifty pounds of ice at a time.”
Kezra and Paxa worked the shovel shift. She hauled the shattered blocks of blue ice in heavy canvas rubble-buckets from the stairwell out to the main crosscut, dumping them down the dry side-chute where they would fall harmlessly into an abandoned drainage pocket without obstructing the ladderway.
The work was grueling, back-straining labor in freezing air that burned their throats with every breath. Every muscle in Kezra’s shoulders screamed with tiredness, her palms chafed raw inside her leather gloves despite the sheep fat Paxa rubbed into her skin during the rest breaks. But there was a clean, honest simplicity to the…
