if he could make it work. It would make an elongated circle of water to be used then. He'd have to check, obviously, since he didn't know where people farmed here at all, except the little he'd seen from the air.
“What's that?” Trice yelled back, pointing to a group of people, about fifty or sixty of them, gathered a short distance outside the southernmost gate into the city.
The people were a motley group from the air, mainly wearing brown and white, near the center there was a clutch of city guard red and white. At first, given the soft yelling that he heard, Tor wondered if the people were going to attack the guards. They had them surrounded, sort of, a rough semi-circle. But then he noticed that people were running from the town, carrying heavy timbers.
Then he got it. He'd seen something similar once a long time before, when one of the neighbor kids, Bill Sampson, had fallen down a well.
Without waiting he redirected towards the group on the ground and flew in as fast as he could, so fast he couldn't breathe the air sucked away too hard for his lungs to capture. Tor just held his breath. If someone was down a well they either had hours to get them out… or seconds. He couldn't tell which from the air. They probably couldn't really tell on the ground either.
He shoved his right hand out as far as it would go, the copper medallion around his neck growing first warm, then hot, which it had never done before. It burned, but not to an extent that he thought he was being injured, about like too warm bath water. He landed outside the group away from the vast white wall and ran towards the center as fast as his legs could carry him. Rolph overtook him on the ground, his longer legs stretching out.
“Situation report!” He yelled, a tone of command that Tor had never heard from his friend before. It got the guards talking all at once, finally the man in charge of the guard group shouted the others down and explained as fast as he could.
Tor couldn't tell if the man recognized Rolph or not, but apparently a giant man flying up and yelling for a situation report got a response. Something he might need in the future himself, if he ever grew a foot and a half taller. He could already do the flying part, so half of the work on that was done even.
“Child, boy, seven years old. Tanners kid. Fell down old well. Middens really.” The man didn't seem to care who they were overly, and turned back to shout at the men with the timbers.
“No good! Crap, those won't hold a man, we have to send someone down there. We need thick timbers! Now!” He screamed, sounding a little panicked.
Tor could see why.
The sides of the hole in the ground were crumbling in. He could feel the field shifting, even if it looked solid at the moment, the walls were already collapsing. It probably wasn't even all that deep, but if it caved in, the child died. A thin man in red and white dangled over the edge, feet held by three other men, all big and brawny workman types. They pulled the guardsman out and he shook his head.
“No good Captain… I can't work my shoulders past the first bend and if I try to dig it starts to hit the kid. We can't wrap a rope around a corner neither. Someone has to go down.” He looked the captain dead in the eye and shook his head grimly. If he couldn't do it, as thin as he was, no other man there could either.
A woman who looked to be about twenty-five or so, with dark brown hands and smudges of darkness on her face, cried out loudly.
“Simon! My baby!” A swarthy man in stained clothes and a stout leather apron took her in his arms, both had tears in their eyes. He tried to comfort her, but it didn't seem to be working too well. Of course not. Her boy was about to die in an old shit pit. No comforting could work on her at all right now.
Tor sized up the man that had tried to get to the boy, thin, like he was, but tall, near as tall as Rolph. That made a difference in how big a person really was, he knew that firsthand from fighting practice. Big skinny guys weighed a whole lot more than he did. They were bigger around too. The bones of the shoulder and waist were bigger even if they looked as thin over all. It was a difference in scale. Looking around Tor thought he had what he needed. Or enough to give it a shot anyway. Someone had to try something.
There was a child trapped.
He turned to Rolph and noticed that the girls had landed and stood next to each other about twenty feet back. He pointed at the trunks. And then told Rolph to get him enough rope, at least fifty feet. The tanner, the man holding the woman got big eyes when he saw who was standing there trying to fetch rope to save his child and scrambled to get it himself. Luckily the rope that someone had gotten looked to be both long and strong enough.
“Girls!” He pointed at Sara and Trice. “Get the plates off of the trunks and put them all on the bottom of… Sara's. It's the strongest of them.” It was too, heavy wood with iron banding, meant to last if she had to travel for a few years he guessed. Or possibly if she had to use it to beat someone to death. It was just that solid.
Tor had them put the plates on the bottom of the chest while he took his clothing off, hoping to narrow his profile a smidgen more, except for the new underwear that Rolph had provided, which he kept for modesty's sake. Not that it would stay on when he crawled down, but for now at least no one would point or stare. A shame to climb into a pit like that wearing the nice silky material, a lavender color, the nicest piece of clothing he'd ever actually owned, since they'd been an outright gift not just loaned to him like the other clothes had been. Oh well. He was tempted to take them off anyway, but there were all those women watching and it would be rude to force them to see his naked body. Bad enough so much flesh showed already.
When the chest was rigged up with all four copper floats on the bottom and the rope tied to it securely, Tor took a deep breath.
“I need this tied to my foot. The left one. I may need the right later…” He smiled when he said it, a grim feeling deep in his mind, touching his soul. They really had to hurry. The lines of force were dipping around the edge of the pit, he thought.
A well had packed and solid walls in general. A cave-in took your water away, so you made sure that didn't happen if you were smart. You put in supports or lined with stone. Probably doubly so in a dry area like this. A cave-in to a cesspit just broadened the mouth and covered the waste for you. No one reinforced them particularly. Worse, as they dried over the years they became fragile and could collapse under their own weight. That was probably what had happened here. The brown earth above hadn't been covered, no boards or planks for safety, so the hole the boy was in probably hadn't been dug at all. It had just been filled a long time before and forgotten about, until the kid fell in and started crying for help.
One of the sturdy men, an older guy in a light tan canvas workman's outfit, came over and tied his foot off, almost taking out the circulation.
“Boy,” he whispered, close enough that Tor could feel the moisture of his breath on his right cheek. “Any looser and it won't support what I think you're going to try, but hurry. More than ten, fifteen minutes, and you risk losing the foot.”
Tor nodded that he understood, realizing that to most of these people it probably looked like they were sending one mostly naked little boy in after the other. Close enough. He looked around and found that all the guard actually had flying rigs. He saw the captain and waved him over.
“Your best man? The steadiest I mean… The… the one that will follow my orders for this? Even if it seems ridiculous listening to someone like me?” It was a lot to ask of a grown man, following his orders, but Tor knew they didn't have a lot of time for arguments either. It was why he couldn't ask one of his friends to do it. That and the fact that the whole thing could go incredibly wrong. If he died, Tor didn't want any of them to carry that with them, did he? At least some stranger wouldn't feel like they lost a friend.
The fellow in charge looked around and waved a man who looked to be near fifty over and just pointed at Tor, not explaining anything. Good. This must be the right man if that was all the information he needed.
“OK. The floats on the bottom of the trunk will do the lifting. Tap them with your hand piece before you take off, they'll follow you. When you're in the air give me slack until I tie the boy off. Then take it up slowly as I try to get him out. If it collapses… well, I'm going to get a shield on him and me, so if that happens try to pull us up as hard as possible as soon as you notice it. If it does go… just pull. I, uh, may scream if you do… That doesn't mean stop. Got it?” He didn't want to sound weak, but if he started squealing like a baby the man had to know what to do.
“Got it.” The man sounded confident at least. His weathered face and hard eyes under the white and black hair was reassuring.
Tor found himself dangling within half a minute, carrying a coil of rope in his right hand. He was lowered carefully, but quickly enough. The hole didn't smell like much, thank god, the dried human waste like dust, mainly. It
