'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.
'Find a surgeon,' he ordered and, as the man hesitated, he repeated the command. 'Go! Get a surgeon! Do it quickly!'
The fat man's eyes betrayed him. They slid away from Will's and he turned to go. Will's cold voice stopped him.
'Wait!'
The man turned back. Still he would not make eye contact with the Ranger.
'Look at me,' Will commanded and, slowly, the man raised his eyes. 'If you run away, if you don't come back, be certain that I will hunt you down,' Will told him. 'I promise you won't enjoy that.'
He saw the fear of certain retribution slowly overcoming the treachery in the man's eyes and the trader nodded quickly. Then he turned and slunk off into the alley behind him.
Aloom was muttering feverishly. Will unstrapped the small canteen from the Arridi's belt and trickled a few drops of water into the man's mouth. Aloom's eyes cleared for a few moments and he looked up at Will.
'Did we win?' he asked.
Will nodded. 'We did,' he assured him. He saw the relief in Aloom's eyes. Then the lieutenant tried to struggle to a sitting position, and Will had to restrain him gently.
'Rest,' he said. 'There's a surgeon coming.'
'The Wakir?' Aloom said, then stopped and took several ragged breaths, as if the mere effort of speaking exhausted him. 'Is he safe?'
Again Will nodded.
'He's fine. I saw him with Halt when it was all over. Something happened to Yusal,' he added inconsequentially, still trying to understand what had gone on in the square. He had heard Yusal's voice suddenly cut off in a cry of agony. Yet he knew none of his friends had a bow with them.
Aloom had drifted into a state of delirium again, as if the news that his lord was safe was enough for him. His arms and legs began to twitch and his breath was coming in ragged bursts.
Will heard a soft patter of footsteps approaching in the alley and reached for the hilt of his saxe knife. He had recovered it from the body of the dead Tualaghi when he first climbed down from the wall. Two figures emerged from the shadows of the alley and he recognised the fat trader. Beside him was an older man, carrying a leather satchel over one arm.
'This man is a healer,' the trader said and his companion came forward, dropping to his knees beside the muttering lieutenant. He looked around, saw Will's discarded cloak lying close by and rolled it into a makeshift pillow. Then he placed it under Aloom's head, allowing Will to move free. He examined the wounded man briefly, looked up at Will.