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.
Chapter 47
'Riders of the Blue Veil! Tualaghi warriors! Listen to me!'
Yusal's harsh, grating tones rang out over the market square in the sudden silence that had greeted the pause in combat. As one, Tualaghi, Arridi and Bedullin all turned to look at him.
He was on the eastern side of the square, standing on a market stall to allow him to address them. Halt noted the rough bandage wound round his upper arm. The bandit war leader had made his way clear of the execution platform in the confused moments when Will had begun shooting. Now he had managed to regroup. A force of twenty men stood around him, weapons ready, faces covered by the ubiquitous blue veils.
The square was empty now of townspeople – except for those who had been caught up in the battle between the two forces and now lay in crumpled heaps on the stony ground.
Perched high on the watchtower, Will heard the Aseikh's words too. But Yusal was hidden from Will's sight by the buildings along the northern side of the square.
'Look around you! Look at the enemy! There are barely forty of them!' Yusal continued. And he was right. The raiding force had been hard pressed in the battle and many of them had fallen, never to rise again. The remainder were grouped defiantly in front of the platform where Halt and the others were to have been executed.
'We outnumber them! If we work together, we can crush them!'
There was a sullen growl of assent from the throats of the Tualaghi warriors. They, too, had lost men in the hard fighting. But they had started with a four to one superiority and they had maintained the ratio. As Yusal made his point, they began to realise that it was well within their power to crush the small band who opposed them.
'Seley el'then! I will give you one chance. One chance only. Throw down your weapons and surrender!'
Selethen laughed harshly. 'Surrender? Do you think we believe you'd show us mercy, Yusal? You were about to kill us all!'
Yusal spread his hands in front of him. 'I'll offer you the mercy of a quick death,' he replied. 'Otherwise, you'll linger for days in agony. You know my men are masters of slow torture.'
Selethen looked sideways at Halt. 'That's true enough,' he said quietly. 'I think we'd be better to die with our weapons in our hands.'
Halt went to reply, then stopped. Somewhere close by, he could hear a faint humming noise – a hum that gradually rose in pitch and intensity. He had no idea what it was. He shook his head, dismissing the strange sound.
'I'm with you,' he said. 'We'll fight on. You never know when something's going to turn up.'
Yusal had waited several minutes for Selethen's reply. When he realised none was forthcoming, he raised his arm above his head, preparing to give the signal to his men for one final, overwhelming attack on the smaller group.
'Very well. You've rejected my offer. Now you'll pay. Tualaghi riders, let – '
His words were cut off in a strangled grunt of pain and his hands flew up to his forehead. A solid smacking sound could be heard clearly around the square. Then Yusal's hands dropped and revealed a mask of blood covering his eyes and upper face, flowing down to soak into his blue veil. He took one faltering step, missing the edge of the stall he was balanced on, and fell full length to th
e hard ground below. He lay there, unmoving.
The Tualaghi stirred uneasily. Their leader had been cut down in mid-sentence. Yet there had been no evident weapon that had struck him – only that ugly smacking sound followed by a river of blood flowing down his face.
The desert riders were superstitious. They believed that djinns and devils and spirits all lived in these ancient mountains. Now one of them, virtually out of thin air, seemed to have struck down their leader with terrifying force. They began to back away from the defensive line of Arridi and Bedullin warriors, muttering to one another, asking what had happened to Yusal. One of his lieutenants, braver than the rest, sprang up onto the stall in place of his leader and tried to rally them.
'Tualaghi warriors!' he yelled, his voice breaking. 'Now is the time for – '
Again there was a meaty smack and, like Yusal, the man's hands flew to grasp at a sudden, vicious wound that appeared on his forehead. He lurched, grabbed for the stall's awning, missed and fell to the ground. He knelt there, doubled over, clutching his face and moaning in pain.
This time, Halt saw Evanlyn, at the rear of the platform, slowly lowering the sling. She caught his eye and gave him a grim smile. He noticed that the necklace of heavy marble stones was no longer round her throat.
'Well, what do you know about that?' he asked of no one in particular.
Demoralised, confused and filled with superstitious fear, the Tualaghi began to back away.
Then there was a chorus of battle cries and the clash of weapons as Umar and the rest of his force burst into the square. The Bedullin warriors fanned out quickly into a half circle and the Tualaghi found themselves surrounded, with Umar and his men at their back and the forty determined defenders before them.
The Tualaghi were essentially bandits and thieves. They would fight without mercy, but only when the odds were solidly in their favour. A four to one advantage was the sort of ratio they looked for in a battle. When the numbers were virtually even, and with no leader to spur them on, their eagerness for battle tended to fade away.
Slowly at first, then with increasing frequency, their weapons began to fall to the ground at their feet.
***
'There's one last little thing to take care of,' Erak said.
Umar's troops had disarmed the remaining Tualaghi and were busy subduing them, tying their hands behind their back and leaving them seated cross-legged in the square. Yusal had been bound and taken under guard to the store room he had used as a prison. The Aseikh was still dazed and only semi-conscious. The heavy marble stone from Evanlyn's sling had left him with a severe concussion.
'Toshak?' Svengal answered him.
Erak nodded. 'Toshak. The treacherous swine has stolen off somewhere in all the confusion.'
'He was in front of the platform when the whole thing began,' Halt pointed out.
Evanlyn nodded. 'But he started to move towards those colonnades when Will began shooting,' she said. She looked around. 'Where is Will, anyway? What's keeping him?'
***
Will knelt in the rubble beneath the watchtower, his bow and quiver discarded, Aloom's head resting on his knee. The Arridi lieutenant was dying. The loss of blood from his multiple wounds had been too great. As Will had dropped lightly from the wall to tend to him, he glanced up and saw the fat trader who had betrayed them, still standing, frozen to the spot, watching them.
'Find a surgeon,' he ordered and, as the man hesitated, he repeated the command. 'Go! Get a surgeon! Do it quickly!'
The fat man's eyes betrayed him. They slid away from Will's and he turned to go. Will's cold voice stopped him.
'Wait!'
The man turned back. Still he would not make eye contact with the Ranger.
'Look at me,' Will commanded and, slowly, the man raised his eyes. 'If you run away, if you don't come back, be certain that I will hunt you down,' Will told him. 'I promise you won't enjoy that.'
He saw the fear of certain retribution slowly overcoming the treachery in the man's eyes and the trader nodded quickly. Then he turned and slunk off into the alley behind him.
Aloom was muttering feverishly. Will unstrapped the small canteen from the Arridi's belt and trickled a few drops of water into the man's mouth. Aloom's eyes cleared for a few moments and he looked up at Will.
'Did we win?' he asked.
Will nodded. 'We did,' he assured him. He saw the relief in Aloom's eyes. Then the lieutenant tried to struggle to a sitting position, and Will had to restrain him gently.
'Rest,' he said. 'There's a surgeon coming.'
'The Wakir?' Aloom said, then stopped and took several ragged breaths, as if the mere effort of speaking exhausted him. 'Is he safe?'
Again Will nodded.
'He's fine. I saw him with Halt when it was all over. Something happened to Yusal,' he added inconsequentially, still trying to understand what had gone on in the square. He had heard Yusal's voice suddenly cut off in a cry of agony. Yet he knew none of his friends had a bow with them.
Aloom had drifted into a state of delirium again, as if the news that his lord was safe was enough for him. His arms and legs began to twitch and his breath was coming in ragged bursts.
Will heard a soft patter of footsteps approaching in the alley and reached for the hilt of his saxe knife. He had recovered it from the body of the dead Tualaghi when he first climbed down from the wall. Two figures emerged from the shadows of the alley and he recognised the fat trader. Beside him was an older man, carrying a leather satchel over one arm.
'This man is a healer,' the trader said and his companion came forward, dropping to his knees beside the muttering lieutenant. He looked around, saw Will's discarded cloak lying close by and rolled it into a makeshift pillow. Then he placed it under Aloom's head, allowing Will to move free. He examined the wounded man briefly, looked up at Will.
'Your friend?' he asked.
Will nodded. He'd only known Aloom for a few days but the man had held off three swordsmen to give Will the chance to save the others. You couldn't ask more of a friend than that.
The surgeon shook his head.
'I can give him something to ease the pain – nothing more,' he said. 'He has lost too much blood.'
Will nodded sadly.
'Do it,' he said and watched as the healer took a small vial from his satchel and allowed several drips of a clear liquid to fall into Aloom's mouth, onto his tongue. In a few seconds, Aloom began breathing more freely. His chest rose and fell more evenly. Then the breaths came more slowly until, finally, they stopped.
The surgeon looked up at Will.
'He's gone,' he said and Will nodded sadly. He glanced up and saw the trader watching him fearfully. The man obviously, was remembering how he had betrayed the two strangers to the Tualaghi. Now one of them was dead and the other had shown that, young as he was, he was not a man to cross. The trader wrung his hands together and moved forward, pleading for mercy. He dropped to his knees.
'Lord, please… I didn't know you were… ' he began.
Will cut him off with a contemptuous hand gesture. The man had betrayed them, he knew. But he had also returned with a surgeon. Suddenly, Will felt there had been enough killing on this day.
'Oh, go away,' he said quietly. 'Just… go away.'
The man's eyes widened. He couldn't believe his luck. He rose slowly,. turned away. Then he hesitated, making sure Will hadn't changed his mind. Finally, reassured, he scuttled into the alley. Will heard his soft shoes pattering on the broken stones for a few minutes, then there was silence. The surgeon regarded him with sympathy. He had laid Aloom out with his hands folded over his chest. Will retrieved his cloak – Aloom had no further use for it. He spread the lieutenant's own cloak over the still form, covering the face. Then he felt in his purse and handed the surgeon a silver coin.
'Stay with him?' he asked. 'Watch over him until I come back.'
He reached down, retrieved his bow and quiver and headed off down the alleyway to the market square.
Chapter 48
Toshak peered round the corner of a narrow street leading onto the square. The beginning of the wide thoroughfare that led to the main gate was forty metres away. He looked now and saw Erak and his friends moving towards the colonnades that lined the far side of the square. Somebody must have seen him running in that direction, he thought.
He smiled grimly. He had gone that way initially. But then he'd doubled round, cutting through a maze of streets and alleys to emerge back here. He had a horse saddled and ready, in a stable a few doors back from the square. Now his enemies were moving away, leaving the way clear for him to escape. And the Rangers, he noted with satisfaction, were without their cursed longbows. All he needed to do was fetch the horse, lead it to this corner, mount and ride for his life.
Once he was out of Maashava, who knew? He'd have a head start, a fresh horse and plenty of water. He'd make forthe coast sixty kilometres away. His ship, Wolfclaw, was moored in a little bay and he was an experienced stellar navigator. He'd travel by night so those damned Rangers couldn't track him. In two days, he could be on board.
But first, he had to get out of Maashava. And this was looking like his best chance. He backed slowly away from the corner for a few paces, then turned and ran lightly to the stable.
***
'The trouble is, he could have gone anywhere once he made it this far,' Horace said. Halt nodded, chewing his lip reflectively. Beyond the colonnades that lined the market square, they found a maze of narrow, winding streets and crowded buildings.
'We'll just have to keep looking till we find him,' he said. 'At least he'll be easy to spot.'
'What's all that shouting?' Evanlyn interrupted. From the square, they could hear voices raised, calling the alarm. In a group, they ran back through the rear door of the coffee house they had just left, then out onto the square once more.
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