The four powder kegs were nestled into four drilled cavities cut directly into the load-bearing thrust-bearing of Stone Beta.
Tomas knelt on the wet gravel rim of the giant’s kettle. His lantern was held in his left hand. Meanwhile, his right gently cleared away a heap of rotted spruce splinters that covered the base of the first keg.
The keg was nine inches in width and fourteen inches tall. It was built from seasoned white oak staves bound with four heavy brass hoops. The brass was green with thick crusts of green rust. But the wood had been preserved by a heavy dipping coat of black asphaltum varnish. Across the top head, stamped into the oak with an iron branding die, sat the royal ordnance seal. An royal broad-arrow enclosed within a sunburst, flanked by the letters R.A.B. · DEMOLITION CHARGE #4.
Tomas took out his pocket measuring tongs and measured the width of the bung hole.
“Two inches,” he murmured, his breath catching in his throat.
Through the center of the wooden bung ran a thin, seamless tube of drawn red copper, six inches long. The upper end of the tube was flared like a trumpet and sealed with a lump of hardened gutta-percha resin. From the resin projected two fine wires of braided copper, their ends twisted together to form a short-circuit loop.
