Erak's Ransom (24 page)

For the past day, the prisoners had been hearing the sound of hammering. Their captors were building something in the market square, they realised. Or, more accurately, their captors were forcing the Arridi townspeople to build it while they stood by and fingered their weapons. But with the large door remaining closed and locked the entire time, there was no way of knowing what was going on. The mystery was driving Gilan to distraction. Under normal circumstances, he probably wouldn't have become so obsessed by the noise. But Gilan had nothing to occupy his mind while they sat hour after hour in the old store room. So the question of what was being built loomed larger and larger with him.
'Relax,' Halt told him, for the tenth time. The young Ranger was pacing the sand floor of the cave, restless energy positively radiating from him.
'I can't relax,' he said. 'I want to know what they're up to.' He stopped beside his old mentor and looked down at him. 'Don't you sense they're up to something?' he said.
Halt shrugged. 'I'm sure they are. But since I have no way of finding out what it is, I'm not going to bother about it.'
Gilan looked around the dimly lit room for support. Erak and Svengal were sitting cross-legged, playing a complicated Skandian version of knucklebones and wagering nonexistent money.
'Doesn't it bother you two?' he asked.
Erak looked up and shrugged. 'It's probably market stalls,' he said.
Gilan shook his head in frustration. 'Probably! Is that good enough for you?'
Erak considered the question for a moment, then nodded. 'Yes,' he said simply.
Gilan spread his hands in a gesture of annoyance. 'But don't you want to
know?'
'No.'
It probably
was
market stalls, Erak reasoned. Anyway, Erak had other uses for his brain right now. He was keeping a running total in his mind of the amounts he'd lost and won playing knucklebones with Svengal. A man needed a sharp brain for that as Svengal was not averse to forgetting the odd amount that he might have lost.
'I figure I've won seventeen thousand, three hundred crowns from you so far,' he said now to his second in command.
'True. And that goes against the seventeen thousand, two hundred crowns I've won from you,' Svengal replied instantly.
Erak frowned. 'Are you sure you've won so much?'
Svengal nodded. 'Totally sure,' he said.
Erak shrugged. Svengal was right but it had been worth asking in case he'd forgotten the four hundred crowns he'd won just as their midday meal had been delivered. No such luck, he saw now.
'So that makes two hundred you owe me,' he said innocently. He reached for the bones and became aware of Svengal's pained expression.
'I know that Oberjarls are supposed to rob their subjects blind, Erak. But could you do it with taxes rather than bad arithmetic?' he said. 'Last time I figured it, seventeen thousand, three hundred less seventeen thousand, two hundred leaves one hundred.'
'So it is,' said Erak as if he'd only just realised his mistake. Svengal snorted derisively and reached for the bones clutched in his leader's hand.
And it's my throw. Not yours,' he said.
'So it is,' Erak repeated. Svengal rolled his eyes to heaven, took the bones and prepared to throw.
'Another thing ... ' Gilan began.
'Oh my God,' Halt said wearily.
But Gilan merely glanced at him before he continued. 'Another thing,' he repeated. 'Has anyone noticed the strange looks the guards have been giving us? When they bring us our food, they're sort of ... grinning about something.'
'They're happy souls,' Halt said.
Gilan shook his head. 'They're smirking at us. Something's in the wind. I can sense it.'
'My friend,' Selethen told him, 'it's no good wasting energy worrying about it. Just relax.'
Gilan shook his head stubbornly. 'I want to be ready for it when it happens,' he said. Evanlyn looked at him curiously.
'How can you be "ready for it" when you don't know what "it" is going to be?'
'Then I'll be ready for anything,' the young Ranger said.
'Which is the same as being ready for nothing,' Halt muttered to himself, although he made sure he muttered it loudly enough for Gilan to hear him.
The younger Ranger drew breath to reply, but the rattle of the key in the door lock caught their attention. The big door opened, the rusty hinges shrieking a nerve-tearing protest over the last few centimetres of their travel, and two of the guards entered with their evening meal. Outside, the last light was fading over the town. With the mass of hills behind them blocking the light from the west, it became dark here earlier than out on the flat plain.
Conscious of Gilan's statements, Evanlyn watched the guards as they set down the cold coffee, flat bread and a meagre handful of dates. One of them caught her watching and grinned at her. Yes, she thought, Gilan has a point. The grin was not a friendly one and it smacked of
I know something unpleasant that going to happen to you.
Then the suspicion was confirmed as he raised his thumb to his throat and drew it across in an unmistakable cutting gesture, rolling his eyes in a grim parody of death.
Unnoticed by the guards and the other prisoners, Horace had sidled closer to the open door so that he could look out onto the town below them. Now as they went to leave, the two guards became aware of his position and shoved him roughly back to join the others.
'I didn't like the look of that,' Evanlyn said in a worried tone.
Horace hesitated. Then he realised that his companions deserved to know what he'd seen.
'You'll like it less when you hear what they've been building. It's a big raised platform at the end of the square — about two metres above the ground, with steps running up to it.'
'Like a stage?' Erak suggested. 'Maybe they're going to put on a play.'
'Or an execution,' Horace said.
Will and Aloom joined the throng of field workers making their way back into the town. There were Tualaghi guards at the gateway, of course, but they took little notice of the Arridi workers streaming past them. In all the years that the Tualaghi had been forcing themselves on towns and villages in outlying areas, they had never encountered any real opposition. They were always careful to leave the occupants just enough to live on and regroup after they left. And they usually didn't return to a town for several years after they had ransacked it. As a result, the Arridi people had come to accept the sporadic invasions as part and parcel of life. Not pleasant, but not worth dying over.
In the crowd around them, Will recognised at least three Arridi-Bedullin pairs. He glanced at Aloom and saw that the lieutenant had noticed as well.
'Let's find a coffee house,' he said quietly. 'My back's getting tired.'
Both of them were burdened by large bundles of firewood. They'd spent the afternoon gathering it from the gullies and canyons in the surrounding area. In contrast to the treeless desert, the foothills to the northern massif had a sparse cover of spindly trees and bushes. The underground streams that honeycombed the hills provided sufficient water for the vegetation to grow.
The firewood bundles were useful props. They would be able to sell them to one of the inns or coffee houses in the town, which would make them instantly welcome. The Arridi always needed firewood. Plus they helped disguise Will's slightly foreign appearance as he moved through the gate past the Tualaghi guards. He walked with his head bowed and his back bent under the load, keeping his eyes and face down.
There was an even more important reason for carrying them. In the centre of Will's bundle was his unstrung longbow and quiver of arrows.
They crossed the town square, Will glancing sideways at the large platform built at the western end. Its purpose was unmistakable.
'Looks like they're ready,' he whispered and Aloom nodded agreement.
'Let's move away from here. We're too exposed out in the square.'
They dived into one of the narrow streets that led away from the market square and its ominous wooden platform. Neither of them had any idea where they were going. But they both knew better than to look uncertain. They walked steadily along the street, following its twisting path. Will was aware they were moving upwards as the street followed the natural incline of the land.
He felt Aloom's hand tugging his sleeve and he looked to where the Arridi lieutenant was pointing down a side alley.
There was a two-storey building, larger than its neighbours, about thirty metres away. A signboard hung out over the alleyway, with Arridi symbols painted on it in fading letters.
'There's an inn,' said Aloom, and led the way towards the building.
They had opted to spend the night in an inn. The other pairs would spread themselves out among inns or coffee houses in the town. Obviously, there wouldn't be enough of them to accommodate fifty extra men. But it was normal practice in a market town like this for the buildings that lined the sides of the market square to set up canvas awnings, projecting out into the square itself. The itinerant field and market workers who came into town for market day would bed down for the night under their shelter. So would many of the Arridi-Bedullin pairs.
That meant they'd be on hand in the market square the following morning, which was where Will wanted them when the fighting started. Aloom and Will, however, wanted to be close to the wall and one of the watchtowers that Will had selected as a vantage point.
There was a lean-to stable beside the main building. They entered it, lowering their bundles of firewood to the ground. Will reached inside his and quickly withdrew his longbow and quiver, secreting the weapons in a manger half filled with old hay. There were a few animals in the stable — two horses and a ragged-looking donkey. They looked up incuriously at the newcomers, then went back to chomping on their hay.
'Obviously they don't have too many guests,' Aloom said. 'We should be able to get a room here.' They slung the bundles over their shoulders once more and marched to the inn's front door.
They entered the main room of the inn. In Araluen or Gallica, this would have been the tap room, where the patrons drank ale or wine. But the majority of Arridi avoided alcohol, choosing to drink strong bitter coffee instead. Will laid the bundle of firewood down and glanced around the room. There were eight or nine men seated at low tables, mostly in pairs or threes. They looked up at the newcomers, then, seeing they didn't know them, went back to their conversations. One man sat apart. He was overweight and he continued to stare at Will as Aloom went to the bar and negotiated a meal and a room for the night in return for the firewood and a small amount of money.
'Haven't seen you around before,' the innkeeper said, once the bargaining was done. There was a note of enquiry in his voice. Aloom met his gaze unblinkingly.
'That's probably because I keep myself to myself,' he said. His tone was less than friendly and invited no further discussion. Country people in Arrida, he had told Will, went to great lengths to keep their own business private — although, conversely, they loved sticking their beaks into other people's affairs.
The innkeeper accepted the rebuff philosophically. He poured two cups of coffee and placed them on a wooden tray, along with a plate of fresh flat bread, several spiced dips and four skewers of grilled lamb.
Aloom brought the food and drinks to the table Will had selected and they began to eat.
As they did, Will could feel the fat man's gaze still on him.
'We're being watched,' he said quietly to Aloom. The Arridi officer glanced up and made eye contact with the fat man.
'Something on your mind, friend?' he said sharply. The man was unabashed. 'You're strangers around here,' he said.
Aloom nodded. 'That's because we heard you spend a lot of time here,' he said rudely.
'So where have you come from?' the man asked. Aloom fixed him with an unfriendly stare. He shifted on the cushion and removed the dagger, still in its scabbard, from his belt. He placed the weapon on the table before him.
'I don't believe that's any of your business,' he said. Then, in an aside to Will, loud enough to be heard, he added, 'Typical small-town busybody. Always minding other people's business for them.'
Will grunted and filled his mouth with bread and hot lamb, avoiding the need to reply.
'Does your friend ever say anything?' the fat man asked. Aloom set down the piece of bread he had just rolled round several chunks of meat and gave an exasperated sigh.
'I heard him say
oops!
once, when he cut the ears off someone who was asking too many questions.' Some of the other guests looked up and nodded in appreciation.
Obviously, the fat man wasn't popular in the coffee house. 'Leave it, Saoud!' one of them called across the room. 'Let the people eat their meal.'
There was a general chorus of agreement and the fat man looked around, his distaste for his fellow guests all too obvious. He sneered at them all, then finally settled back on his cushion and drank his coffee. But his eyes stayed on the two strangers.
When they finished their meal and headed for the upper floor, where their room was situated, Will could still feel the man's eyes boring into his back. He wondered if they should do something about him.
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.

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.
Turning abruptly, the fat cloth merchant retraced his steps. Talish might be interested to hear this, he thought. Talish was a Tualaghi warrior — a minor authority in the nomad band, who usually travelled with two henchmen to do his bidding. They had quickly established a reputation among the Arridi townspeople as thieves and standover men. Somehow, they always seemed to divine where wealthy Arridi merchants had hidden their money or their best products. In fact, it was Saoud who told them. He had established an alliance with the three Tualaghi. In return for their leaving his stalls and store houses untouched, he informed on his neighbours and competitors.
There was a coffee house that they frequented, by the edge of the market square. Saoud increased his pace, his fat body wobbling as he hurried through the narrow streets to find the Tualaghi thief. If Talish didn't seem interested in the two men, he'd tell him they were carrying a purse full of gold. That would definitely get the Tualaghi's interest.
Later, Saoud could always claim the strangers must have lost it or hidden it. If Talish were frustrated or angry at the absence of the gold, it would only work against the two strangers. And as far as Saoud was concerned, that was all to the good.
Will and Aloom picked their way through piles of rubbish and fallen masonry. The northern section of the town was in the worst state of disrepair. The houses had been left to rot and collapse and had been taken over by squatters — the poor, the unemployed, the criminally inclined. From time to time, they saw faces peering furtively through crumbling doorways at them. As soon as they were spotted, the observers would pull back into the shadows of the houses.
The streets here were narrow and wound in a haphazard fashion as they detoured around houses that had collapsed and had simply been left where they fell — gradually deteriorating into shapeless mounds of masonry. Will had lost his sense of direction some time back. He hoped Aloom knew where they were heading. The Arridi lieutenant certainly led the way confidently enough.
Will heaved a sigh of relief as they eventually emerged from a twisting, confusing alley and he saw the remnants of the north wall ahead of them.
Originally, there had been a wide, clear footpath along the inner base of the wall, with buildings not permitted to encroach within three metres. But over recent years, people had built hovels and lean-tos against the wall itself — often using the collapsed mud bricks that had formed part of the wall to build their dark little hutches.
They had come further east than they had planned, forced into one winding, random detour after another as they had picked their way through the ruined houses. Now Will saw that the watchtower he had picked out as a vantage point was some two hundred metres away. He recognised it by a roof beam that had collapsed and caught on the railing of the observation deck. The beam stuck out at an acute angle.
He looked up at the sun. It was climbing higher into the eastern sky and the tower was a long way away. There was another one closer to them, barely fifty metres away. By the time he picked his way past the lean-tos and the fallen piles of rubble, he might reach the original tower too late. It had taken them longer than they had estimated to traverse the ruined part of the town.
He gestured to the nearer tower.
'That'll have to do,' he said and Aloom nodded. He was looking worried.
'It's getting late,' he said. 'They'll be starting any minute.'
Half running, they picked their way through the chaos of fallen masonry and hovels towards the nearer of the two watchtowers.