Will, high on his vantage point, saw the movement and realised he had missed. But he had other priorities for the moment. Yusal was out of the picture but there were still armed Tualaghi all over the platform, threatening his friends. His hands moved in a blur of action as he nocked, drew, shot, nocked, drew, shot, until half a dozen arrows were arcing over the square, and the guards began dropping with shrieks of agony and terror.
Four of them went down, dead or wounded, before the others regained their wits. Faced with the prospect of staying on the platform, exposed to the deadly shooting of the unseen archer, they chose to escape, leaping from the platform into the square below.
Already, a series of individual battles had begun as the infiltrating pairs of Bedullin and Arridi troopers threw off their cloaks, drew their weapons and struck out at the nearest Tualaghi warriors. The square was soon a seething, struggling mass of clashing warriors. The townspeople of Maashava attempted to escape from the killing ground, but many of them were wounded as the Tualaghi, fighting for their lives, not knowing where the sudden attack had come from, simply struck out blindly around them.
On the platform, a few guards remained. But not for long. Erak and Svengal combined to pick one bodily off the ground and heaved him into three of his comrades. The four bodies crashed over and rolled off the edge of the platform into the struggling mob below. Gilan, meanwhile, had seized Yusal's fallen sabre and was cutting through Evanlyn's bonds with its razor-sharp edge.
Horace, taking in what had happened, reacted with all the speed of the trained warrior he was. He dashed forward to where Halt was struggling his way clear of the block, raising himself to his feet and slipping his bound arms up over the block. Horace helped him untangle himself, then turned him towards Gilan, a few metres away, now releasing Erak and Svengal from their bonds.
'Gilan'll cut the ropes,' he said, giving the Ranger a shove to send him on his way. Then the young knight scanned the square and the space beyond it for a sight of his friend. He saw a figure high on a watchtower on the wall. The clothes were unfamiliar but the longbow in his hand was unmistakable. Taking a deep breath, Horace yelled one word.
'Will!'
His voice was trained to carry over the din of a battlefield. Will heard it clearly. Horace saw him wave briefly. Horace held both his bound hands in the air above his head for a few seconds, looking up at them. Then he bent forward and placed them on the far side of the execution block, pulling them as far apart as he could to expose the ropes that held his wrists together. He turned his face away, closed his eyes and prayed that his friend had got the message.
Hissssss-Slam!
He felt the bonds part a little, opened his eyes and saw the arrow quivering in the wood of the execution block. Will, had cut one of the three strands holding Horace captive. The other two were still intact.
'You're slipping,' Horace muttered to himself. But the answer to the problem lay in the form of the razor-sharp broadhead on the arrow. It took only a few seconds for Horace to cut the remaining ropes with the keen edge of the warhead, leaving his hands free.
In the square below them, a small group of half a dozen Tualaghi had reorganised and were heading in a fighting-wedge towards the stairs leading up to the platform. Horace grinned mirthlessly to himself, reached down and retrieved the massive two-handed executioner's sword, testing its weight and balance with a few experimental swings.
'Not bad,' he said.
As the first two Tualaghi mounted the stairs to the platform, they were met by a sight from their worst nightmare. The tall young foreigner charged them, the huge sword whirling, humming a deep-throated death song. The leading warrior managed to catch the blow on his shield. The massive blade smashed into the small circle of metal and wood, folding it double on his arm. The stunning impact of the blow sent him tumbling. back down the stairs, to crash into two men following him.
The second man, slightly to his right, drew back his own sword to strike at Horace. But Horace's return blow was already on its way and it caught the Tualaghi's blade a few centimetres from the hilt of the sword, shearing it off. This nomad was made of sterner stuff than his comrades. Barely pausing to react to the massive damage done to his weapon, he dropped it and charged forward, ducking under the sweeping flight of the two-handed sword as Horace brought it back. As he came, he drew his belt dagger and slashed upwards in a backhanded stroke, catching Horace high on the shoulder.
A thin red line formed immediately, then blurred as blood began to well out of the cut. Horace barely felt the touch of the blade but he felt the hot blood coursing down his arm and knew he'd been wounded. How bad the wound might be he had no idea, and in any event, there was no time to worry about it now, with the Tualaghi inside the arc of his giant sword.
But there was more to the sword than its long blade and Horace simply brought the massive brass-pommelled hilt back in a short, savage stroke, thudding it into the man's head. The kheffiyeh absorbed some of the blow, but not enough. The man's eyes rolled back into his head and as Horace put his shoulder into him, he sailed back off the platform, landing on the struggling heap that had fallen at the bottom of the steps.
Horace stood at the top of the steps, feet wide apart, the sword sweeping back and forth in short, menacing arcs. Having seen the fate of the last group of men who tried to mount the steps, none of the other Tualaghi were anxious to try their luck.
Halt and Selethen stood towards the rear of the platform. Gradually, the square was emptying as the Maashavites found their way into the alleyways and streets that led from it. The struggling, fighting groups of Arridi, Bedullin and Tualaghi were rapidly becoming the only ones left in the square. And the Tualaghi's numerical superiority was becoming obvious.
'Nice of the townspeople to lend a hand,' Halt muttered. He and the Wakir had both armed themselves with swords dropped by the fallen guards. Gilan had a sword as well and the two Skandians were brandishing spears – also the former property of their guards. Evanlyn was fumbling with the broad leather belt she had been wearing, unlacing a length of leather thong that had formed a decorative criss-cross pattern on the belt. Halt glanced at her curiously, wondering what she was up to.
Then Selethen replied to his comment and his attention was distracted from the girl.
'They're used to submitting, not fighting. They think only of themselves,' the Wakir said. He had expected no more of the people of Maashava. He had heard how some of them had even cheered his upcoming execution.
Gradually, in response to a pre-arranged plan, the Arridi and Bedullin warriors were falling back to form a perimeter around the execution platform. Selethen glanced around the square, a worried frown on his face.
'There can't be more than fifty of them,' he said. 'Where did they come from?'
'Will brought them,' Halt answered. He gestured to the semi-collapsed watchtower, where he had finally caught sight of a small figure perched among the crossbeams, a longbow ready in his hands. Halt waved now and his heart lifted as the figure returned his salute. With no immediate targets to seek out, Will was conserving his arrows, hoping for another sight of Yusal.