Aloom sensed his uncertainty. 'Don't worry,' he said as they mounted the stairs, 'by tomorrow, he'll have forgotten all about us. He'll have something else to gossip about.'
Will wasn't so sure. He hoped Aloom was right.
Chapter 42
The key rattled in the store room lock. The prisoners glanced up idly. It was morning, a few hours after first light, and they were accustomed to having the first meal of the day delivered about now. They had fallen into a routine. The day was divided by the three meals they were given. The food was unvaried and uninteresting – usually yesterday's flat bread, stale and tasteless, and a handful of dates – not enough to provide any of them with a real meal.
But at least there was coffee and, even though it was served lukewarm at best, Horace, Halt and Gilan appreciated it. Svengal and Erak, of course, bemoaned the absence of strong ale. Svengal sometimes thought longingly of the half-full cask he had left behind on Wolfwind, several weeks ago. He wondered how his men were faring in Al Shabah. Probably a lot better than he was here, he thought morosely.
The others were nursing thoughts of their own. Gilan was still wondering about the platform Horace had reported seeing. Executions, the young warrior had said. Gilan knew that he and Halt were decidedly unpopular with their captors. If anyone were going to be executed, he thought, it would be the two of them. But he faced the thought philosophically. Rangers were accustomed to being in tight spots. They were also used to being the principal targets for their enemies. He had lived with the possibility of an event like this for years. All he could do now was wait for an opportunity to escape.
Halt's seeming disinterest was an act, he realised. The older Ranger didn't want to communicate any uncertainty or fear to Evanlyn. Once he realised the fact, Gilan found himself wishing that he hadn't gone on so much about being 'ready for anything'. He'd be ready if any sort of opportunity arose. So would Halt. Talking about it wouldn't make them any more so. But it might have made Evanlyn nervous.
Horace remained calm. He had faith in Halt and Gilan. If there were a way out of their predicament, he knew they would find it. Like Gilan, he saw through Halt's seeming lack of activity. He knew the Ranger would be keyed up for action, his brain working furiously.
It was the fact that their captors came for them at the time when they normally served breakfast that caught them all by surprise. Expecting two men to enter the store room laden with a tray of food and a jug of coffee, they were caught unawares when a dozen men, swords drawn, dashed through the open doors and took up stations around them.
Halt, sitting with his back against the wall, went to rise. But the point of a curved sabre stopped him, pressing none too gently into his throat.
'Stay where you are,' the Tualaghi captain ordered him. He gestured to the seated Ranger, his eyes never leaving Halt's face. 'Hands out front,' he said. Then, to one of his men, as Halt complied: 'Tie him.'
Halt's hands were quickly tied in front of him. Initially, as the Tualaghi went to tie them, he tried to tense the muscles in his arms and wrists, hoping to relax them later and cause the ropes to loosen slightly. But the Tualaghi captain was wise to the old trick. He rapped Halt sharply across his knuckles with the unsharpened back of his blade.
'That's enough of that,' he ordered harshly. Halt shrugged and relaxed his hands. It had been worth a try. Around the room, he watched as the others had their hands similarly bound. He frowned. Why all of them? He and Gilan, he could understand. Maybe even Horace. But the others were valuable hostages. He felt a sinking sensation in his stomach as he saw that the others were being dragged to their feet. Then the captain gripped the rope that secured his hands together and hauled him upright as well.
'Where are we going?' he demanded but the man simply laughed and shoved Halt towards the door.
'This is not looking good,' Horace said as he was shoved after the grey-bearded Ranger.
Will and Aloom slept relatively late. Most of the other guests had risen, breakfasted and left shortly after first light.
However, reasoning that they had to wait until the ninth hour, they had decided that there was no point rising early and then attracting suspicion by loitering in the vicinity of the watchtower on the crumbling wall. Consequently, they entered the main room of the inn an hour after most of the other guests had departed.
Most of them. The fat man from the night before was still in his room. He had watched, his door held just a crack open, as the two young men made their way down the hall to the stairs. Saoud was a vain man. He was a wealthy cloth merchant and he owned several stalls in the market place, all manned by his paid staff. The actual business of dealing with customers was beneath Saoud these days. He was too wealthy and too important for such crass dealings. Instead, he spent his time in coffee houses, where he expected to be treated with the respect due to a rich, self-made man.
All of which added up to the fact that he hadn't liked Aloom's brusque, disrespectful manner the previous night. In Saoud's eyes, he was a man who deserved respect, fawning respect even, from people he encountered. He wasn't used to the sort of thinly veiled threats that Aloom had made. And he hadn't liked the fact that others in the coffee room had joined in on the strangers' side.
There was something suspicious about those two, he thought. And he knew people who might be pleased to hear about it.
As Aloom and Will descended the stairs to the coffee room below, he quietly emerged from his room, closing the door gently behind him, wincing at the noise the lock made as it slipped home. Surely they must hear him?
But no. He could hear their voices floating up the stairway as they talked, without interruption or pause. Walking carefully, staying close to the wall to avoid having floorboards squeak under his bulk, he moved to the stairs himself.
He paused as he heard the main door of the inn open and close. For a moment he thought the two men had left. Then he heard the older one speaking to the innkeeper. So the younger one had gone outside for something, he thought. But what?
He edged his way down a few more stairs, his ears alert for any sound of his quarry returning. Then he heard the front door again and saw the younger stranger moving past the hall at the bottom of the stairs, into the coffee room again.
This time, he was carrying what looked like a long staff, wrapped and tied in canvas, in his right hand. Saoud frowned. He had never seen a staff like that before. Moving carefully, he went down the rest of the stairs and let himself out into the street through a side door.
There was another alleyway a few metres to the right, even smaller than this one. He hurried to it, moving gratefully into the shadows, then settled down to wait for the two men to leave.
A few minutes later they emerged from the inn and turned left, heading north. Saoud watched them curiously, then followed them. It was already thirty minutes past the eighth hour and the majority of people in Maashava would be heading for the market square. Even though they might have no argument with the prisoners who were scheduled to die, an execution was a spectacle and most people wanted to watch it.
Why then were these two heading away from the square? There was nothing of interest on the northern side of the town – just a confusing jumble of falling down, rat-infested hovels. And the crumbling old wall itself, of course, with its ramshackle watchtowers.