The Jester

Hadrian discovered the most fascinating thing about plummeting in total darkness wasn’t the odd sense of euphoria from the free fall or the abject terror from anticipating sudden death but that he had the time to contemplate both.

The drop was that far.

The four had plenty of time to scream, which they’d done the moment the rope snapped. Hadrian wasn’t sure if Royce yelled. He didn’t hear him, and doing so wasn’t in his partner’s nature, but Wilmer’s cries drowned them all out. The pig farmer was so loud, his shrieks ricocheted off the stone walls and bounced back before any of them hit the water. A vicious slap and suffocating cold drove any remaining air from their lungs.

The impact would have hurt anyone and was worse for Hadrian given his broken leg. It was possible he blacked out from the pain, if only for an instant, but the plunge into ice-cold water woke him.

Just deep enough, Hadrian thought as he pushed off the bottom with his good leg, hoping to reach air in time. Normally weighed down by three swords, this was the first time he was happy to have lost two. Well, not so much lost as having one shattered and the other devoured. Still, the two-handed spadone strapped to his back was the largest and heaviest he owned.

He broke the surface with a gasp.

“Hadrian?” Royce called.

Turning, Hadrian could barely make out his friend. A soaked hood collapsed over his head, as if a bat hugged his face.

“Still alive,” he yelled back—less a reply than an inward thought that burst out.

The nearby flurry of splashing suggested neither Wilmer nor Myra could swim. Wilmer had never impressed Hadrian as athletic in any way. Given that walking had proved difficult for the pig farmer, swimming might be as impossible as flight. As for Myra, Hadrian imagined her experience with submersion in water would have been limited to lying in a brass tub while servants added scented oils and refilled her wine cup.

“There’s a blue light behind you,” Royce pointed out, after peeling off his hood. “Looks like the pool’s edge is just ten feet or so. Can you make it?”

Hadrian turned and saw an eerie glow coming from the cavern wall. Royce was right. The edge of the little lake was close, but the bottom was distant. The subterranean pond was less a basin and more a stone fissure filled with water—likely with straight sides. The ice-cold pool sapped Hadrian’s strength, freezing his muscles and strangling his breath. A death trap.

“I can try,” Hadrian replied, still struggling to keep his head above the surface. Over his shoulder he called out, “Myra? Wilmer? You okay?”

“Forget about them,” Royce said. “Get yourself out.”

Hadrian struggled to see in the dim light. He could hear both Wilmer and Myra gasping, coughing. “I don’t think they can swim.”

“Not your problem—not mine either. Get to the edge.”

“If you won’t help them, I—”

“You’ll what? Drown with them?” Royce asked. His friend was somewhere behind Hadrian, somewhere in the dark, hardly making a sound. “You’ll be lucky to get out alive on your own.”

Royce was right, but when had that ever mattered? “I’ll do what I can.”

“All right, all right!” Royce barked, the familiar frustration in his voice. “I’ll help them. But get going. I can’t save everyone.”

Hadrian swam as best he could, happy to be wearing leather and wool rather than chain mail. His left arm hung limp, numb and useless. The distance wasn’t far, just a few kicks away, but still a challenge with only one good arm and leg. At least the cold soothed the burns on his back and, if the water wasn’t putrid, it might help clean the claw marks raked across his chest.