away, the rod of Rankan authority. Hanse had more silver than would comprise
Bourne’s retirement. Under its weight he could not hope to escape. He could drop
it and run or be overtaken. Dragging sword from sheath. Bourne hoped the roach
kept running. What fun to carve him for the next hour or so!
Hanse was working at a decision, too, but none of it fell out that way. Perhaps
he should have done something about trying to buy off a god or two; perhaps he
should have taken better note of the well, this afternoon, and not run that way
tonight. He discovered it too late. He fell in.
He was far less aware of the fall than of utter disorientation – and of being
banged in every part of his body, again and again, by the sides of the well,
which were brick, and by the saddlebags. When his elbow struck the bricks, the
bags were gone. Hanse didn’t notice their splash; he was busy crashing into
something that wasn’t water. And he was hurting.
The well’s old wooden platform of a cover and sawhorse affair had fallen down
inside, or been so hurled by vandals or ghosts. They weren’t afloat, those
pieces of very old, damp wood; they were braced across the well, at a slant.
Hanse hit, hurt, scrabbled, clung. His feet were in water, and his shins. The
wood creaked. The well’s former cover deflected the head-sized stone Bourne
hurled down. The fist-sized one he next threw struck the well’s wall, bounced to
roll down Hanse’s back, caught a moment at his belt, and dropped into the water.
The delay in his hearing the splash led Bourne to misconstrue the well’s depth.