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Chapter 43
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Umar crouched behind a large granite boulder at the head of the gully, his eyes screwed up, intent on the watchtower that he and Will had selected the day before. The half-fallen beam made it easy to distinguish from its neighbours.
There was a movement behind him and he turned to see Hassan. The young man had made his way forward from the position further back in the gully where the main Bedullin force waited quietly.
'Any sign of him, Aseikh?' Hassan asked.
Umar shook his head. 'He should be in position by now. It's nearly nine.'
'Maybe the executions have been delayed?' Hassan suggested. Umar scratched his beard reflectively.
'Maybe. But I can't see that devil Yusal giving up such a chance to impress the locals.' He held up a hand as for silence, his head turned slightly to listen. From inside Maashava, the deep, rhythmic booming of a bass drum carried to them on the gentle morning breeze.
'No,' he said. 'The execution's going ahead. What the devil has happened to Will and Aloom?'
'Shall I bring the men up, Aseikh?' Hassan asked.
Umar hesitated. Chances were there would be no one looking in this direction and they could get a head start down the dusty track that led to the town. But he rejected the idea. All it needed was one curious pair of eyes to see them and the alarm would be raised.
'We'll wait for the Ranger,' he said.
***
Surrounded by guards, the seven prisoners were led down a long earthenware ramp from the storehouse cave to the streets of the town itself.
Shoved and buffeted, they stumbled over the uneven ground, strung together in a long line, forbidden to speak to each other. For the most part, the Arridi townspeople watched them with a mixture of apathy and morbid pity. Yet, as always in a crowd, there were those who chose to jeer at the prisoners and throw stones, clumps of earth and garbage at them. Halt glared at one group of young men in their twenties. Unlike most Arridi, they had obviously been drinking the powerful spirit known as arariki. They stumbled and staggered together, their eyes red and their jaws slack as they hurled insults at the line of prisoners. Halt turned and looked back over his shoulder at Selethen, the next in line behind him.
'I thought your religion banned alcohol,' he said. Selethen glanced with distaste at the noisy, cat-calling group and shrugged.
'There's a low element in every society,' he said. 'People like that are simply too glad that they're not the ones being led to the block today.'
A guard stepped forward and stung the two men with a knotted rope end.
'Hold your tongues!' he yelled at them. 'No talking, we said!'
They emerged onto the square itself now. It was thronged with people and their escort had to shove to make a path for them. Half those watching were Tualaghi, Halt saw. They were enjoying themselves, hoping the prisoners' nerves would break at the last moment and reduce them to shrieking cries for mercy.
Not that they'd be listened to. The concepts of pity and mercy were unknown to the Tualaghi.
On the far side of the square, close beside the raised timber platform which they could now see clearly for the first time, the deep booming of a drum began. It continued in a slow rhythm, like the beating of a great heart. It was a signal for the crowd around them to re-double their noise. The single file of prisoners was forced through the crowd until they were standing by the steps leading to the platform.
Halt looked up. Yusal stood above them, dressed today in flowing robes of dark blue, his booted feet spread apart, hands on hips. As ever, his face was concealed behind the dark blue veil. Only his eyes were visible, as cold as ever. He faced the crowd now, scanning the faces before him, waiting for silence to fall.
Gradually, the shouting died away to an occasional exclamation. Then those too were stilled as Tualaghi soldiers in the crowd struck out at anyone who would interrupt their leader. An unnatural silence fell over the square.
'Bring the prisoners up,' Yusal said, his harsh voice now heard clearly in all corners of the square.
The guards urged their captives forward and Halt led the way up the rough steps to the platform. He felt the stairs shudder under his feet as Selethen mounted them behind him and Svengal followed behind the Arridi.
Yusal grabbed Halt's shoulder as he went to move along the platform, making way for those who were following.
'You stay here,' the Tualaghi told him. 'You will be first.'
There was an angry growl of approval from the Tualaghi warriors in the crowd. The other prisoners might provide sport and diversion with their executions. The two Rangers were hated.
The drum, which had temprorarily ceased its ominous booming, began once more.
As Gilan climbed to the platform, following Erak and Evanlyn, Yusal gestured for him to stand beside Halt. Another murmur of pleasure came from the watching Tualaghi.
There was a bustle of movement in the ranks of the crowd below them and Toshak shoved his way through to the front. He grinned up at Halt.
'This is where you get it in the neck, Ranger!' he called
Halt ignored him, looking away, scanning the crowd, hoping beyond hope that he might see Will somewhere. He still had an unreasoning faith in the fact that his apprentice had survived and that he would not let them go to their deaths without attempting a rescue of some kind.
If he were asked why he held to that belief, he couldn't have given a rational answer. It was faith. Faith in the ingenuity and courage of the young man he had grown to love as if he were a son. Will would be there because he was needed. And Will had never let him down in the past.
Vaguely, he was aware of Erak replying to Toshak, inviting him up onto the platform.
'Even with my hands tied, I'm sure I could break your treacherous neck for you, Toshak!' he said. Toshak grinned infuriatingly.
'I'll take your head back to Skandia, Erak,' he said. 'I'll use your skull as a beer tankard.'
Yusal glared at the two northerners. He had a sense of theatre and occasion and a flair for the dramatic. Their uncultured, noisy bickering had no place here.
'Be silent!' he commanded. Toshak glanced at him, shrugged indifferently, and leaned against one of the support poles to the platform. Yusal, satisfied that there would be no further interruption, held up one hand.
'Let Hassaun stand forward!' he shouted. The cry was taken up by the Tualaghi round the square.
Hassaun! Hassaun! Hassaun!
The shouting echoed off the building fronts, keeping pace with the incessant booming of the drum. Some of the Arridi were caught up in the moment and joined their voices to the chorus. They had seen executions before. They had a good idea what was about to happen. The shouting grew in intensity, volume and urgency.
Then a massive figure appeared on one side of the square, standing high above the heads of the spectators. For a moment he seemed to be floating in the air, then Halt realised that he was on a large wooden shield, being borne at shoulder height by four Tualaghi as they forced their way through the crowd towards the execution site.
The drumbeat intensified in pace and the shouting went with it. Hassaun was a massive figure, clad entirely in black. His long, flowing robe billowed on the early morning breeze and the tails of his black kheffiyeh trailed behind him as the four warriors carried him forward. The lower half of his face was covered by the ever-present dark blue Tualaghi veil.
His hands, crossed in front of his chest, rested on the hilt of a massive, black-bladed, double-handed sword.
***
Will and Aloom had reached the nearer tower as the drumbeat began, deep and sonorous.
'They're starting!' Aloom cried. 'Get moving! We haven't much time!'
Will said nothing. He stripped the canvas wrapping from his longbow, bent it behind his right calf, anchoring it in place with his left ankle, and slid the bowstring up into its notch, grunting slightly with the effort of overcoming the bow's fifty-kilogram draw weight.
It was slow going. In spite of Aloom's exhortations to hurry, and his own growing sense of urgency, he knew he had to pick his hand and footholds carefully. The tower was in worse condition than he had expected and there was an excellent chance that it might collapse under a hurried movement.
He'd gone up four metres, past the top of the wall itself, and was stepping carefully to one last crosspiece before he gained the observation platform.
The drum had ceased for a few minutes but, in the distance, he could hear it booming again, coming faster and faster now. Then a chant from hundreds of voices carried to him:
Hassaun! Hassaun! Hassaun!
'Who the blazes is Hassaun?' he muttered to himself, inching carefully along a decidedly untrustworthy timber brace.
He was poised in midair, his foot reaching out tentatively for the more solid-looking platform, his weight supported by his arms so that he was utterly helpless, when he heard a voice from behind him.
'Who the hell are you? And what are you up to?'
He looked down. Aloom was below him, facing back the way they had come. Ten metres away, three Tualaghi warriors watched them suspiciously. Behind them, smiling vindictively, was the fat merchant they had seen in the inn the previous night.
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Chapter 44
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The giant executioner balanced easily on the shield, borne on the shoulders of four Tualaghi warriors as they made their way through the crowded market square towards the execution site. As he passed through the crowd, hands were raised and weapons brandished by the Tualaghi in admiration of the massive figure.
The four bearers stopped beside the execution platform and Hassaun stepped lightly onto it. As he did so, another bout of cheering rose up.
Now that he could see him more closely, Halt realised that the executioner really was a giant. He stood well over two metres in height and his shoulders and body were built in the same massive proportion. He whipped the huge, two-handed sword up until it was raised vertically above his head and paraded along the front of the platform, ignoring the line of prisoners and brandishing the sword to the assembled crowd.
Again the cries of his name echoed out.
Hassaun! Hassaun! Hassaun!
He marched along the front of the platform to the far end, then back to the centre again, drinking in the adulation of the crowd. Then, when he stood at the centre, he raised the sword to the fullest stretch of his arms, reversed it with a flick of his powerful wrists and drove it, thudding, point first into the platform.
He stepped back a pace, leaving the sword slowly quivering as it stuck into the wood.
Then he reached up to the lacing that secured his outer robe, quickly released it and swung the robe out and away from his body, letting it fall in a heap behind him.
He was clad now only in a pair of wide, billowing trousers, gathered at the waist and each ankle, and the black kheffiyeh and dark blue face veil of the Tualaghi. His bare torso gleamed slightly with oil and now the hugely muscled arms, chest and abdomen could be seen clearly.
He stepped forward and, without any apparent effort, flicked the sword free of the wood, then spun it around his body and head in a bewildering series of high-speed arcs and circles. He handled the huge sword as if it were a toy, but to anyone who knew weapons and could estimate the weight of the long, heavy, tapering blade, it was an impressive display that spoke volumes about the strength and co-ordination of arm, body and wrist muscles. The highly polished black blade caught the rays of the morning sun and flashed and dazzled the eye, moving so quickly that at times it seemed more like a solid black disc than a narrow blade.
Hassaun! Hassaun! Hassaun!
The cries went up again and this time, more of the Arridi joined in, mesmerised by the strength and power and charisma of the Tualaghi giant. After all, six of the seven captives standing on the platform were foreigners and the Arridi had no cause to mourn their execution. As for the seventh, word had gone around as to Selethen's rank and the people of remote back-country towns like Maashava had little reason to love the Emrikir and the Wakirs who ruled Arrida's provinces under him. As Halt had observed some days earlier, most officials in Arrida were corrupt, and prone to look for bribes when they dealt with the people under them. Selethen was an exception to the general rule but the Maashavites weren't to know that. He governed a distant province so they had no first-hand knowledge of him.
In addition, normal contact between subjects and rulers came at tax time, when townspeople like those in Maashava were required to hand over a percentage of all they had earned or grown during the year. At such times, the government showed little sympathy for a town that might have been invaded and pillaged by raiding Tualaghi.
'We starve while they grow fat in Mararoc' was an old back-country saying and the people of Maashava felt there was a lot of basic truth in it. So if a well-paid, well-fed government official were to lose his head, there'd be few here to grieve over the fact. With typical farmers' fatalism, they reasoned there would always be another eager to take his place.
So now, faced with the savagely compelling prospect of a mass execution performed by an obvious artist like Hassaun, they began to cheer and encourage him to greater feats.
Hassaun was pleased to oblige. He began dancing from side to side, delivering overhead cuts, side cuts and deep thrusts with the massive sword, letting it flicker and sweep with all the speed of a snake's tongue. Back and forth he went, from left to right, then back to the left again.
Then he leapt high in the air and delivered a huge, arcing downwards cut with the sword, miming the decapitation of a kneeling victim. The point thudded into the wood planks and again he released it and leapt back, leaving the sword quivering from the force of the blow.
As quickly, he seized the two-handed grip and jerked it free again, then began knee-walking from side to side, dropping to a knee with each stride, and all the time keeping the sword spinning, flashing and cutting. The chanting of his name intensified, with the cadence of the chant matching the rhythm of his movements.
From his kneeling position, he leapt high in the air, spinning as he came down to face the line of victims, carving an invisible X in the air with two diagonal sweeps of the sword. Then he spun once more to face the crowd. For all his size and strength he was amazingly light on his feet. He signalled to one of the men who had carried him to the platform and the warrior reached to a nearby market stall and retrieved a melon. He tossed it high into the air above the giant.
The sword flashed in two opposing diagonal cuts. The first cleaved the melon in two pieces. The second sliced through the larger of the two before the sections of fruit dropped to the platform with a wet thud.
Unbidden, the soldier now lobbed another melon and this time Hassaun halved it with a horizontal sweep, followed instantly by a vertical cut through one of the pieces.
The crowd howled its delight.
Hassaun responded by passing the sword, spinning, from one hand to the other, maintaining the rhythm as he passed it from right to left hand then back again, holding it by the long hilt, close to the crosspiece, controlling it with the strength of his hands and wrists.
He tossed it, spinning, high into the air, caught it as the hilt came round. Then, leaping high, he spun one hundred and eighty degrees in the air and brought the sword down in a savage splitting stroke at the captive who happened to be facing him.
By chance, it was Horace.
The crowd fell suddenly silent as the huge figure leapt, spun and struck. They expected to see the foreigner split from head to shoulders, at least. But at the last moment, with an amazing display of strength and control, Hassaun halted the downward stroke so that the massive blade merely touched Horace's hair.
The crowd yelled, then fell silent as they realised that the
young foreigner hadn't moved, hadn't flinched. He hadn't tried to raise his bound hands in a futile attempt to ward off the terrible blow. He had merely stood, rock steady, watching the executioner with a disdainful look on his face.
Horace's pulse was racing and adrenaline was surging into his system. But he showed no sign of it. He had somehow realised what was coming as the huge man had leapt and spun before him. The co-ordination of the back stroke with the turn had alerted Horace. Sensing what was about to come, he had determined that he would not move a muscle when the stroke arrived. It took enormous strength of will but he had managed it. Now he smiled.
Prance and leap all you like, my friend, he thought, I'll show you what a knight of Araluen is made of.
Hassaun paused. He frowned as he stared at the smiling young man before him. In times past, that movement had invariably resulted in the victim's dropping to the ground, hands above his head, screaming for mercy. This youth was smiling politely at him. Incredibly, he held out his bound hands, palms uppermost.
'That was really very good,' he said. 'I wonder could I have a go?'
It was as if he really expected Hassaun to pass him the sword. The executioner took a pace back, bewildered. He felt the situation was moving out of his control. Then matters became worse as the two bearded Skandian ruffians joined in.
'Nice work, Horace,' Erak said, chuckling delightedly. Svengal echoed the sentiment. 'Well done, boy! That's set Horrible Hassaun back on his haunches!'
With a scream of rage, Hassaun turned on the two guffawing Skandians. The sword spun over his head then he swung it in a flat, horizontal arc this time, straight at Erak's neck. As with Horace, he halted the blow only millimetres from the Skandian. But, like Horace, Erak showed no sign of flinching.
ERAK'S RANSOM Page 30
