However badly it had been handled, Bourne had horse, sword, and a few paces 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. Hanse clung and dangled. The water was cold.
In the circle of dim light above, Hanse saw Bourne's helmeted head. Bourne, peering down into a well, saw nothing.
'If you happen to be alive, thief, keep the saddlebags! No one will ever find you or them - or the Savankh you stole! You treacherously tricked us all, you see, and fled with both ransom and Savankh. Doubtless I will be chastised severely by His pretty Highness - and once I'm in Ranke again, I'll be rewarded! You have been a fool and a tool, boy, because I've friends back home in Ranke who will be delighted by the way / have brought embarrassment and shame on Prince Kittycat!'
Hanse, hurting and scared that the wood would yield, played dead. Strange how cold water could be, forty feet down in a brick-walled shaft!
Grinning, Bourne walked over and picked up the Savankh, which His stupid Highness would never see. He shoved it into his belt. Stuck his sword into the ground. And began wrestling a huge stone to drop, just in case, down the well. His horse whickered. Bourne, who had left his sword several feet away, froze. He straightened and turned to watch the approach of two helmeted men. They bore naked swords. One was a soldier. The other was - the Prince-Governor?!
'We thank you for letting us hear your confession. Bourne, traitor.'
Bourne moved. He gained his sword. No slouch and no fool, he slashed the more dangerous enemy. For an instant the soldier's mail held Bourne's blade. Then the man crumpled. The blade came free and Bourne spun, just in time to catch the prince's slash in the side. Never burly, K-adakithis had learned that he had to put everything he had behind his practice strokes just so that his opponents would notice. He did that now, so wildly and viciously that his blade tore several links of Bourne's mail-coat and relocated them in his flesh. Bourne made an awful noise. Horribly shocked and knowing he was hurt, he decided it were best to fly. He staggered as he ran, and the prince let him go.
Kadakithis picked up the fallen rod of authority and slapped it once against his leather-clad leg. His heart beat unconscionably rapidly as he knelt to help the trusted man he'd brought with him. That was not necessary. In falling, the poor wight had smashed his head open on a chunk of marble from a statue. Slain by a god. Kadakithis glanced after Bourne, who had vanished in darkness and the ruins.
The Prince-Governor stood thinking. At last he went to the well. He knelt and called down into blackness.
'I am Prince Kadakithis. I have the wand. Perhaps I speak uselessly to one dead or dying. Perhaps not, in which case you may remain there and die slowly, or be drawn up to die under torture, or ... you can agree to help me in a little plan I have just devised. Well - speak up!'
No contemplation was required to convince Hanse that he would go along with anything that meant vacating the well and seeing his next birthday. Who'd have thought pretty Prince Kittycat would come out here, and helmeted, too! He wondered at the noises he had heard. And made reply. The wood creaked.
'You need promise only this,' Kadakithis called down. 'Be silent until you are under torture. Suffer a little, then tell all.'
'Suffer? ... Torture?'
'Come, come, you deserve both. You'll suffer only a little of what you have coming. Don't, and betray these words, roach, and you will die out of hand. No, make that slowly. Nor will anyone believe you, anyhow.'
Hanse knew that he was in over his head, both literally and figuratively. Hanging on to creaky old wood that was definitely rotting away by the second, he agreed.
'I'll need help,' the prince called. 'Hang on.'
Hanse rolled his eyes and made an ugly face. He hung on. He waited. Daring not to pull himself up on to the wood. His shoulders burned. The water seemed to grow colder, and the cold rose up in his legs. He hung on. Sanctuary was only about a league away. He hoped Kitty - the prince - galloped. He hung on. Though the sun never came up and the moon's position changed only a little, Hanse was sure that a week or two passed. Cold, dark, and sore, those weeks. Riches! Wealth! Cudgel had told him that revenge was a stupid luxury the poor couldn't afford!
Then His clever Highness was back, with several men of the night watch and a lot of rope. While they hauled up a bedraggled, bruised Shadowspawn, the prince mentioned a call of nature and strolled away amid the clutter of big stones. He did not lift his tunic. He rf/rfpause on the other side of a pile of rubble. He gazed earthwards, upon a dead traitor, and slowly he smiled in satisfaction. His first kill! Then Kadakithis began puking.
*
Pitchy torches flickered to create weird, dancing shadows on stone walls grim as death. The walls framed a large room strewn with tables, chains, needles, pincers, gyves, ropes, nails, shackles, hammers, wooden wedges and blocks and splinters, pliers, fascinating gags, mouth- and tongue-stretchers, heating irons, wheels, two braziers, pulleys. Much of this charming paraphernalia was stained dark here and there. On one of the tables lay Hanse. He was bruised, cut, contused - and being stretched, all in no more than his breechclout. Also present, were Prince Kadakithis, his bright-eyed consort, two severe Hell Hounds, his oddly attired old adviser, and three Sanctuarite nobles from the council. And the palace smith. Massively constructed and black-nailed, he was an imposing substitute for the torturer, who was ill.
He took up a sledgehammer and regarded it thoughtfully. Milady Consort's eyes brightened still more. So did those ofZalbar the Hell Hound. Hanse discovered that in his present posture a gulp turned his Adam's apple into a blade that threatened to cut his throat from the inside.
The smith put down the hammer and took up a pair of long-handled pincers.