John Flanagan: Erak_s ransom

'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.

'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 the 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.