The freezing mountain wind howled through the limestone gorge of Oakhaven with the screech of tearing iron.
Sixty feet above the boiling white torrent of the Karst River, the timber check staging suspended beneath the central arcade of Saint Eleanor swung two inches to the east with every gust. Cold alpine rain, needle-sharp and thick with sleet, drove horizontally against the dressed freestone blocks of Pier Six, soaking through Tomas Reed’s woolen smock and plastering his dark hair to his skull.
Tomas knelt on the wet three-inch fir staging planks, his boots wedged against a timber toe-board to keep his footing on the slick wood. His right hand held a five-foot six-sided steel pry-bar forged from tough hard dark metal rail-iron. His left arm was cinched tightly in its three-buckle calfskin brace, the stiff leather pressing into the puckered muscle-sheath scar on his forearm. The damp mountain chill had settled deep into the damaged gristle of his radius, causing a dull, throbbing ache that radiated down into his knuckles. His left fingers possessed only sixty-five percent of their original clamp-force. Because of that, he couldn’t haul the heavy steel bar with balanced two-handed torque. Instead, he locked his braced left wrist against his hip as a pivot point, using the leverage of his broad back and the full strength of his right arm to drive the chisel point into the bedding joint.
