John Flanagan - Erak_s ransom

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.

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.