'Fun?' repeated Toshak.
Svengal smiled winningly. 'Yes. I think it would be such fun to tear that ugly head off your shoulders. And your beaky, blue-faced friend's, too.' He spat the last words out, switching his glare to Yusal.
Toshak raised an eyebrow.
'You should have kept your mouth shut, Svengal. I might have let you live. But now I see how determined you are, well… ' He paused, looking around the tense group who faced him.
'Let's just recap where we stand, shall we?' he said. He indicated Selethen. 'The Wakir is going to be ransomed. He gets off lightly but I have no argument with him. On the other hand, I do have one with Erak and Svengal, so they're going to die. You two Rangers as well.' He pointed at Horace next. 'You're going to have your skin peeled and the young lady here is going to pay us a large amount of money for the privilege of listening to your screams.' He smiled around at them all. 'Have I missed anyone? No? Well, have a nice night thinking on it.'
The smile disappeared. He jerked his head at Yusal and the two of them turned. Then the Tualaghi leader, struck by a thought, stopped and turned back. He held up his left hand as if asking for their attention and moved back towards them.
'There was one more thing,' he said. Then he spat an order to his guards and two of them gripped Halt by the arms, forcing him forward and down until he was on his knees in front of Yusal. The Tualaghi Aseikh then rained closed-fist blows on Halt's face, left and right, striking again and again until the Ranger's face was cut and bleeding and his head lolled to one side. Toshak watched, amused. Erak started to move forward to intervene but the point of a sabre in his belly stopped him. Finally, Yusal stepped back, breathing heavily.
'Let him go,' he told the men holding Halt. They released him and he crumpled to the sand, face down and semi-conscious.
'Not so light on your feet now, are you?' Toshak said to the slumped figure. Yusal uttered a short bark of laughter and together they turned and left the room. The guards, hands on their weapons, backed out after them, slamming the door. In the ensuing silence, the prisoners heard the key rattle in the lock.
Gilan let go a deep, pent-up breath and moved quickly to kneel beside his semi-conscious friend. Gently, he rolled Halt over and began cleaning the mixture of sand and blood from his face. Evanlyn joined him, her hands light and delicate.
Horace brought over the water skin that had been left with them and handed it to Evanlyn. He watched as she gently washed Halt's face. Horace was worried. He had never seen Halt defeated before. Halt was always in control of the situation. Halt always knew what to do next.
'I think we're in big trouble,' he said. Then they all started as Halt moved, raising his hand and trying to sit up. Evanlyn held him down and he stopped his efforts. But he spoke, his voice thick and somewhat slurred by his swollen mouth and face.
'They're forgetting one thing,' he said. There was a light of defiance in his one good eye. The other was now completely closed.
The others all exchanged a glance. They could see no positive side to their predicament.
'And what might that be, Halt?' Evanlyn asked him, willing to humour him.
Halt caught the tone in her voice and glared at her. Then he said, with some force:
'Will's still out there somewhere.'
Chapter 39
The first light of the sun was striking the white-painted houses of Maashava when Will and Umar finally reached a vantage point above the town.
They had climbed for several hours in the pre-dawn dimness, following narrow animal tracks to one side of the township, then angling back until they emerged fifty metres above it, with a perfect view of the comings and goings of the townspeople.
Now they surveyed the town. A low wall ran around three sides. The fourth was protected by the cliffs themselves. There were watch towers raised at intervals along the wall but there was no sign of any sentries. Will remarked on the fact and Umar shook his head contemptuously.
'The townspeople are too lazy to mount guards and the Tualaghi believe there's no enemy within hundreds of kilometres.'
Smoke from cooking fires was rising from many points around the town. Mixed with the acrid woodsmoke was another aroma that set Will's tastebuds alight. Fresh coffee,was being brewed in kitchens throughout the town. Men and women were beginning to stream out of the town, heading down the winding road to the flatlands below, or to terraced fields on the mountain side itself. Will pointed to them and raised his eyebrows.
'Field workers,' Umar said in response to the unspoken question. 'They grow maize and wheat on the flatlands, and fruit and some vegetables in the terraces.'
There was no shortage of water in Maashava. A series of wells tapped into an underground stream that ran through the mountains. Some of this was piped to the terraces, some all the way down to the fields. It was a complex irrigation and cultivation system and Will had seen nothing like it in his time in the dry, and country.
'Who built all this?' he asked.
Umar shrugged. 'No one knows. The terraces and aqueducts are hundreds, maybe thousands of years old. The Arridi found them and restored the town.'
'Well, in any event, they give us an opportunity,' Will said. Umar glanced at him and he continued. 'With all those workers moving in and out each day, we can infiltrate some of your men into the town. I figure if they go in in ones and twos, we could get up to fifty men in over the course of a day.'
'And then what?' Umar asked.
'They could make contact with the townspeople and hide among them. Surely the people of Maashava will welcome anyone who wants to get rid of the Tualaghi once and for all?'
Umar looked doubtful. 'Not my men,' he said. 'They'd stand out as outsiders. The locals wouldn't trust them. They'd be just as likely to betray them to the Tualaghi.'
'But why?' Will's voice rose a little in his frustration at the answer and Umar made urgent gestures for him to keep his voice down. Sound carried a long way in the mountains. 'Sorry,' Will continued, 'but why would they betray you? You're all the same nationality, aren't you?'
The Bedullin shook his head. 'We may live in the same country, but we're different tribes. We are Bedullin. They are Arridi. Our accents are different, so are our customs. In general, Bedullin don't trust Arridi and the Arridi reciprocate. My men would be recognised as Bedullin as soon as they spoke.'
'That's ridiculous,' Will growled. The thought that people could be divided by such minor differences was an affront to intelligent behaviour, he thought.
Umar shrugged. 'Ridiculous maybe. But a fact.'
Will stared at the town below, watching as more people moved out into the street. He gnawed thoughtfully on his thumb.
'But you sent a man in there last night?' he said.
Umar nodded. One of the Bedullin scouts had slipped over the wall after dark. He'd leave again that night and report on what he had heard in the town.
'One man. It's easy for one man to go unnoticed, particularly as he didn't have to speak, merely listen. But we'd never hope to get fifty men in there without someone noticing the different accent.' He decided it was time to change the subject and pointed to one of the openings in the cliff face, at the rear of the township. Unlike others of its kind, where the doors had been thrown wide open to receive the fresh morning air, this one remained closed and barred, and a dozen Tualaghi warriors lounged around it.
That storeroom must be where they're holding your friends.'
Will held his hands up to his eyes, shrouding them to focus his attention as he peered at the strongly defended door.