The collector kicked the chair out from under a man who could not stand without it.
Iven saw the movement through the open end of the covered lane. One moment the old man sat beside a bundle of bedding. The next, wood scraped stone, his hands caught empty air and he went down hard on one knee.
Bram stopped beside Iven with their supper parcels in his arms.
Six men stood at the entrance to a lodging house. Two carried furniture down the steps. One held a bow. Another wore a broad-bladed work axe across his back and kept his left sleeve rolled above a forearm graft. The collector, dressed better than the others, stood over the fallen man with a folded account in his hand.
“Up,” he said. “Or we carry you.”
A woman in the doorway raised a carpenter’s hammer.
The bowman turned toward her.
Iven put his parcel into Bram’s free hand.
