'Keep going, Will!' he called. 'I'll take care of them!'
But there were three of them, all seasoned fighters, and they crowded upon him, swords flashing, rising and failing as they attacked. Aloom gave ground stubbornly before them but he was fighting a losing battle. He set his back to the stones of the wall and desperately parried the storm of blows that rained upon him. Inevitably, one of the swords broke through his defence and he was cut badly on the upper part of his sword arm. Then another stroke slashed across his thigh and he stumbled, recovering just in time to avoid a horizontal slash at his throat.
Hanging awkwardly above him, there was no way Will could unsling his bow in time to help. Even if he could have done so, he couldn't have shot, hanging by his arms. Yet he could see his friend would be dead within a few seconds. Aloom's parries were growing clumsy and awkward now and he was cut again, this time across the forehead so that blood ran into his eyes, half blinding him.
From the square, Will heard the crowd's chanting grow louder and louder, faster and faster.
Hassaun! Hassaun! Hassaun! Hassaun!
The cry came from hundreds of throats and rolled across the town like thunder, waking echoes in the gullies and mountains around them.
Will hesitated for a second. Aloom would die if he didn't help him. But the chanting of the crowd told him that events in the square were building to a climax. Halt needed him…
But Aloom was here and now, and fighting desperately to save him. There was no question about what he should do. Measuring the distance, he released his grip and let himself drop to the uneven battle below him.
He landed feet first on the shoulders of the Tualaghi leader. The man gave a cry of shock and pain and crumpled beneath the force of Will's body dropping on him from four metres above. Will heard the snap of bones breaking somewhere, then a sickening thud as the bandit's head slammed into the hard, rocky ground. Will rolled forward to cushion the shock of landing, although the greater part of the force of his fall had been broken by the Tualaghi's body.
He leapt to his feet as the other two bandits turned on him. Shocked by his unexpected action, they hesitated a second – and that was a second too long. Will stepped into them, closing the distance between him and them so that he was inside the reach of the nearest man's sword.
Always move forward if you have the option.
Halt had drummed the lesson into his brain hundreds of times. A man going forward has the momentum to control a battle. Now Will acted spontaneously, stepping forward. The saxe knife hissed out of its scabbard as he drew and lunged in one smooth, continuous movement, taking the closest man in the centre of the body.
The Tualaghi gave a short cry, half surprise, half pain, and sank back against the wall, his sword dropping from his hand and clanging against the stones.
From the square, Will heard a deafening cheer, then the ringing cry came again as the crowd chanted Hassaun's name. Then there was a sudden silence. He didn't like the sound of that. Time was getting short and there was still one Tualaghi to take care of.
As Will had dropped from the tower onto the shoulder of the first bandit, Aloom had sunk gratefully back against the wall, trying to staunch the flow of blood from multiple sword cuts to his arm, leg and body. He watched as the young Ranger took care of two of his opponents in a matter of seconds, saw the third Tualaghi was within reach now and tried to lend a hand.
Coming to his knees, he slashed at the bandit, but his stroke was weak and poorly co-ordinated. The Tualaghi saw it coming and parried it easily, sending Aloom's sword spinning away out of his grip. Then he raised his own sword to finish off the Arridi. He was an experienced fighter and he judged he had time for one quick killing stroke before he must turn and face the foreigner.
Will threw the saxe underhand, following through to the target automatically, in a movement that had been drilled into him, over and over again, in the past five years.
The Tualaghi, arm raised for the killing stroke, was totally defenceless as the saxe knife flashed across the distance separating him from Will. He felt a heavy impact in his side, an impact that staggered him.
Then a huge pain flamed up around the point of impact and he wondered what it…
Then nothing.
Will started towards Aloom. Then he stopped. From the square, voices were calling again. Initially, they were single voices but then more and more joined together. He frowned, managing to make out the words.
Release her! Release her!
He realised it must be about Evanlyn and for a moment felt a surge of hope. They were going to release his friends. Then Yusal's hard, uncompromising tones cut across the voices of the crowd.
That's enough! Enough!'
The crowd fell silent. Aloom, face screwed up in pain, gestured weakly for Will to climb back up to the watchtower.
'Go! Go! Hurry! There's no time!'
He coughed and scarlet blood stained the front of his robe. But he continued to point to the watchtower and Will realised he was right. He could tend to Aloom later but now, he had to rescue his friends and signal Umar to bring the rest of his men to the attack.
Heedless of the rotting wood that groaned and splintered beneath his movements, he scrambled up the tower. Whereas before he had moved slowly and carefully, this time he moved at lightning speed, reasoning that the less time he put his weight on a hand or a foothold, the less chance there would be that it might collapse beneath him. Several beams, in fact, splintered and shattered after he had stepped clear of them and on to the next. The pieces clattered to the ground below.
'Kill him now!' He heard Yusal's shouted order and he knew, somehow, that he was talking about Halt.
Then he was on the relatively solid footing of the tower platform. He shrugged the bow off his shoulder into his left hand. His right hand automatically sought an arrow from the quiver, had it nocked on the bowstring before he was even aware of performing the action.
From his vantage point he could see across the low, flat-roofed houses of this section of the town to the square. Beyond the milling heads of several hundred spectators, Halt was being dragged forward and forced to kneel beside the executioner's block. His companions stood in a line behind him. Yusal stood to one side, a grim figure with his dark robes and veiled face. On the other side was a monster. A giant Tualaghi, bare to the waist, head and face covered. Hugely muscled, gleaming with oil, holding an immense sword in two hands.
The executioner. Hassaun, Will realised.
He saw Halt kneel, then turn and say something to Gilan, saw Yusal gesture and two men step forward to twist Halt's face back to face the front.
The executioner stepped forward. The sword began to go up over his head.
Will drew the arrow back until the tip of his right forefinger touched the corner of his mouth. His mind and senses analysed the shooting situation in fractions of a second. Range? A little over a hundred and twenty metres. The arrow tip raised slightly in his sighting picture. Wind? Nothing to worry about.
The executioner was almost at full stretch now, measuring his stroke before the sword started down. Will knew this shot had to be right. There would be no time for a second attempt. He shrugged away the confidence-sapping uncertainty that followed the thought.
Worry that you might miss a shot and you almost certainly will, Halt had taught him.
He heard the long sigh of expectation from the crowd, emptied his mind of worry and uncertainty and allowed the bow string to slide free of his fingers, almost of its own volition, sending the arrow on its way.
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 wha
t 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.
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