Erak's Ransom

Chapter 46

Gilan watched helplessly as the massive sword rose higher and higher in Hassaun's two-handed grip. The young Ranger's face was twisted in a grimace of impotent horror. He watched his friend and teacher about to die, torn by a combination of grief and the thought that he was unable to do anything to prevent it. He tried to cry out Halt's name but the word choked in his throat and he felt tears running freely down his cheeks.

The sword rose higher still. Any moment, he knew, it would begin its downward, cleaving path.

But then, Inexplicably, it continued to rise, going past the vertical, past the point where the executioner should have begun his killing stroke.

There was a sudden chorus of surprise from several points in the crowd. Gilan frowned. What was Hassaun doing?

The sword continued up and over as the executioner, arms fully extended above his head, slowly toppled backwards, to fall with a plank-shuddering crash on his back. Only then did those on the platform see what had been visible to the crowd in the square: the grey-shafted arrow buried deep in the executioner's chest. The huge sword fell free as Hassaun hit the planks, stone dead.

'It's Will!' Gilan yelled, scanning the crowd feverishly to see where his friend was concealed.

Kneeling by the block, Halt lowered his head, closed his eyes and whispered a prayer of thanks.

Around them, pandemonium erupted. Yusal watched, amazed, as his executioner fell dead before him. Then he saw the arrow and knew instinctively where the next shot would be aimed. Sword still in hand, he hesitated a second, tempted to finish off the kneeling figure. But he knew he had no time. He turned to his right to escape.

The second arrow was already on its way before the first struck Hassaun down. The moment he released the first shot, Will knew, with the instincts of a master marksman, that it was good. In less time than it takes to say it, he nocked, drew, sighted on the black-robed figure of Yusal and released.

It was the turn to the right that saved Yusal's life. The arrow had been aimed at his heart. Instead, it took him in the muscle of his upper left arm as he turned away. He screamed in pain and fury, dropping his sword as he clutched at the wound with his right hand. Stumbling, he lurched towards the rear of the platform to escape, doubled over in pain, holding his bleeding left arm.

Will, high on his vantage point, saw the movement and realised he had missed. But he had other priorities for the moment. Yusal was out of the picture but there were still armed Tualaghi all over the platform, threatening his friends. His hands moved in a blur of action as he nocked, drew, shot, nocked, drew, shot, until half a dozen arrows were arcing over the square, and the guards began dropping with shrieks of agony and terror.

Four of them went down, dead or wounded, before the others regained their wits. Faced with the prospect of staying on the platform, exposed to the deadly shooting of the unseen archer, they chose to escape, leaping from the platform into the square below.

Already, a series of individual battles had begun as the infiltrating pairs of Bedullin and Arridi troopers threw off their cloaks, drew their weapons and struck out at the nearest Tualaghi warriors. The square was soon a seething, struggling mass of clashing warriors. The townspeople of Maashava attempted to escape from the killing ground, but many of them were wounded as the Tualaghi, fighting for their lives, not knowing where the sudden attack had come from, simply struck out blindly around them.

On the platform, a few guards remained. But not for long. Erak and Svengal combined to pick one bodily off the ground and heaved him into three of his comrades. The four bodies crashed over and rolled off the edge of the platform into the struggling mob below. Gilan, meanwhile, had seized Yusal's fallen sabre and was cutting through Evanlyn's bonds with its razor-sharp edge.

Horace, taking in what had happened, reacted with all the speed of the trained warrior he was. He dashed forward to where Halt was struggling his way clear of the block, raising himself to his feet and slipping his bound arms up over the block. Horace helped him untangle himself, then turned him towards Gilan, a few metres away, now releasing Erak and Svengal from their bonds.

'Gilan'll cut the ropes,' he said, giving the Ranger a shove to send him on his way. Then the young knight scanned the square and the space beyond it for a sight of his friend. He saw a figure high on a watchtower on the wall. The clothes were unfamiliar but the longbow in his hand was unmistakable. Taking a deep breath, Horace yelled one word.

'Will!'

His voice was trained to carry over the din of a battlefield. Will heard it clearly. Horace saw him wave briefly. Horace held both his bound hands in the air above his head for a few seconds, looking up at them. Then he bent forward and placed them on the far side of the execution block, pulling them as far apart as he could to expose the ropes that held his wrists together. He turned his face away, closed his eyes and prayed that his friend had got the message.

Hissssss-Slam!

He felt the bonds part a little, opened his eyes and saw the arrow quivering in the wood of the execution block. Will, had cut one of the three strands holding Horace captive. The other two were still intact.

'You're slipping,' Horace muttered to himself. But the answer to the problem lay in the form of the razor-sharp broadhead on the arrow. It took only a few seconds for Horace to cut the remaining ropes with the keen edge of the warhead, leaving his hands free.

In the square below them, a small group of half a dozen Tualaghi had reorganised and were heading in a fighting-wedge towards the stairs leading up to the platform. Horace grinned mirthlessly to himself, reached down and retrieved the massive two-handed executioner's sword, testing its weight and balance with a few experimental swings.

'Not bad,' he said.

As the first two Tualaghi mounted the stairs to the platform, they were met by a sight from their worst nightmare. The tall young foreigner charged them, the huge sword whirling, humming a deep-throated death song. The leading warrior managed to catch the blow on his shield. The massive blade smashed into the small circle of metal and wood, folding it double on his arm. The stunning impact of the blow sent him tumbling. back down the stairs, to crash into two men following him.

The second man, slightly to his right, drew back his own sword to strike at Horace. But Horace's return blow was already on its way and it caught the Tualaghi's blade a few centimetres from the hilt of the sword, shearing it off. This nomad was made of sterner stuff than his comrades. Barely pausing to react to the massive damage done to his weapon, he dropped it and charged forward, ducking under the sweeping flight of the two-handed sword as Horace brought it back. As he came, he drew his belt dagger and slashed upwards in a backhanded stroke, catching Horace high on the shoulder.

A thin red line formed immediately, then blurred as blood began to well out of the cut. Horace barely felt the touch of the blade but he felt the hot blood coursing down his arm and knew he'd been wounded. How bad the wound might be he had no idea, and in any event, there was no time to worry about it now, with the Tualaghi inside the arc of his giant sword.

But there was more to the sword than its long blade and Horace simply brought the massive brass-pommelled hilt back in a short, savage stroke, thudding it into the man's head. The kheffiyeh absorbed some of the blow, but not enough. The man's eyes rolled back into his head and as Horace put his shoulder into him, he sailed back off the platform, landing on the struggling heap that had fallen at the bottom of the steps.

Horace stood at the top of the steps, feet wide apart, the sword sweeping back and forth in short, menacing arcs. Having seen the fate of the last group of men who tried to mount the steps, none of the other Tualaghi were anxious to try their luck.

Halt and Selethen stood towards the rear of the platform. Gradually, the square was emptying as the Maashavites found their way into the alleyways and streets that led from it. The struggling, fighting groups of Arridi, Bedullin and Tualaghi were rapidly becoming the only ones left in the square. And the Tualaghi's numerical superiority was becoming obvious.

'Nice of the townspeople to lend a hand,' Halt muttered. He and the Wakir had both armed themselves with swords dropped by the fallen guards. Gilan had a sword as well and the two Skandians were brandishing spears – also the former property of their guards. Evanlyn was fumbling with the broad leather belt she had been wearing, unlacing a length of leather thong that had formed a decorative criss-cross pattern on the belt. Halt glanced at her curiously, wondering what she was up to.

Then Selethen replied to his comment and his attention was distracted from the girl.

'They're used to submitting, not fighting. They think only of themselves,' the Wakir said. He had expected no more of the people of Maashava. He had heard how some of them had even cheered his upcoming execution.

Gradually, in response to a pre-arranged plan, the Arridi and Bedullin warriors were falling back to form a perimeter around the execution platform. Selethen glanced around the square, a worried frown on his face.

'There can't be more than fifty of them,' he said. 'Where did they come from?'

'Will brought them,' Halt answered. He gestured to the semi-collapsed watchtower, where he had finally caught sight of a small figure perched among the crossbeams, a longbow ready in his hands. Halt waved now and his heart lifted as the figure returned his salute. With no immediate targets to seek out, Will was conserving his arrows, hoping for another sight of Yusal.

'Will?' Selethen said, his face puzzled. 'Your apprentice? Where would he find men to rescue us?'

Halt smiled. 'He has his ways.'

Selethen frowned. 'A pity he didn't find a way to bring more then.'

'Do you think we should go down and lend a hand?' Halt gestured to the stubborn line of fighters, forming a perimeter around the base of the platform. Selethen looked at him, cut his sword back and forth experimentally to test its balance, and nodded.

'I think it's time we did,' he said.

Hassan grabbed Umar's shoulder and pointed to the left of the tower they had been watching.

'There!' he said. 'He's on that tower!'

They had heard the sudden silence from the town that greeted the death of Hassaun – although they had no way of knowing the reason for it. Then they had heard the clash of weapons and the screaming of the crowd. Obviously, the battle had started, but there was still no sign of the foreigner on the watchtower. And there had been no signal from Aloom's bugler. As luck would have it, he had been struck down, almost by accident, in the opening seconds of the battle. As most soldiers learn sooner or later, if something can go wrong, it will.

Then Hassan had noticed movement on the adjoining tower as Will opened up with his high-speed barrage of arrows and had drawn Umar's attention to it.

'He's on the wrong one!' the Aseikh complained. Hassan shook his head.

'So what? He's on a tower. What are we waiting for?' Umar grunted and drew his sword. He turned to the men crouched behind him in the gully.

'Come on!' he shouted, and led them, yelling their war cries, out onto the dusty track that led to Maashava.

Gilan moved into the thin rank of defenders ringed around the platform and began wielding the unfamiliar curved sword as if he had been using one all his life. The speed and power of his slashing attacks cut through the Tualaghis' defences like a knife through butter. Men fell before him, or reeled away, clutching wounds in pain, sinking slowly to the ground. But, in spite of the confusion around him, Gilan was searching the veiled faces for one in particular – the man who had taken such pleasure in beating him on the road to Maashava.

Now he saw him. And he saw recognition in the man's eyes as he shoved his way through the press of fighting men to confront the young Ranger. Gilan smiled at him but it was a smile totally devoid of any warmth or humour.

'I was hoping we'd run into each other,' he said. The Tualaghi said nothing. He glared at Gilan above the blue veil. Already imbued with a deep hatred of these foreign. bowmen, he had seen another half dozen of his comrades fall before their arrows this morning. Now he wanted revenge. But before he could move, Gilan spoke again.

'I think it's time we saw all of your ugly face, don't you?' he said. The curved sword in his hand flicked almost negligently up and across, with the speed of a striking snake.

It slashed the blue veil at the side, where it was attached to the kheffiyeh, cutting through it and letting the blue cloth fall, so that it hung by one side.

There was nothing extraordinary about the face that was revealed – except for the fact that the lower half, usually covered by the veil, was a few shades lighter in tone than the browned, wind- and sun-burnt upper half. But the eyes, already filled with hate for Gilan and his kind, now blazed with rage as the Tualaghi leapt forward, sword going up for a killing stroke.

It clanged against Gilan's parry, and the Tualaghi drew back for another attack, attempting a hand strike this time. But Gilan caught the other man's blade on the crosspiece of his own weapon, then, with a powerful twisting flick of the wrist, turned the other man's sword aside and went into a blindingly fast attack. He struck repeatedly at the other man, the strikes seeming to come from all angles at virtually the same time. The sword in his hand blurred with the speed of his backhands, forehands, overheads and side cuts.

The Tualaghi was an experienced fighter. But he was up against a swordmaster. Gilan drove him back, the defenders on either side of him advancing with him to protect his flanks. The Tualaghi's breath was coming in ragged gasps. Gilan could see the perspiration on his face as he tried to avoid that sweeping, glittering blade. Then his guard dropped for a moment and Gilan, stretching and stamping with his right foot, drove forward in a classic lunge, the curved sword upturned by his reversed wrist, and sank the point deep into the Tualaghi's shoulder.

Gilan withdrew his blade as the sword dropped from the other man's hand. Blood was beginning to well out of the wound, soaking the black robes. Gilan lowered the point of his sword. As if by some unspoken agreement, the fighting around them stopped for a moment as the other combatants watched.

'You can yield if you choose,' he said calmly. The Tualaghi nodded once, his eyes still burning with hate.

'I yield,' he said, his voice barely above a whisper. Gilan nodded. He stepped back and his foot twisted as he stepped on the arm of a Bedullin warrior who had fallen earlier in the battle. He glanced down. His eyes were distracted for no more than a fraction of a second, but it was enough for the defeated Tualaghi. Left-handed, he drew a curved knife from his belt and leapt forward at the young Ranger.

There was a massive whistling sound, then a great whump!

The Tualaghi stopped in mid-leap, seeming to fold double over the huge blade Horace had swung in a horizontal sweep. Horace withdrew the sword and the warrior crumpled to the stony ground of the square, with no more rigidity or resistance than his blood-soaked robes themselves.

'Never take your eyes off them,' Horace said to Gilan, in an admonishing tone. 'Didn't MacNeil ever tell you that?'

Gilan nodded his thanks. The lull in the fighting that had come when he thrust at the Tualaghi now continued as the two groups of enemies stood facing each other. It was a moment when the Arridi-Bedullin force might have claimed victory but a voice rang out across the square and the moment passed.

Yusal was rallying his troops for one last effort.