It might well be time for the Shurmel to demonstrate to his followers that he was not a man to be taken lightly. He was as skilled as any of them in the subtle arts of poison, of the stealthy attack with a stiletto, or with a small, single-handed crossbow and a venom-tipped bolt. But he had an extra dimension that they were lacking. He was a warrior.
Or at least, he considered himself to be one. And a demonstration of his combat skills might well set the others to thinking, and erode the growing support for Taluf.
All this passed through the Shurmel’s mind in a matter of seconds. He smiled at the slim foreigner before him. Perhaps he was a blessing in disguise, he thought. He had provided an opportunity to dispel any thought of rebellion in the minds of Taluf and his wavering followers.
“No negotiation!” he said now, his voice deep and threatening. “Challenge me if you dare, and die for your impudence!”
He stepped back to the huge wooden throne behind him and leaned his scorpion staff against it. A massive two-handed long sword was secured in a scabbard behind the chair. He slid the long, heavy blade free of its scabbard with a shringing sound of steel on leather. As he did so, the violent movement disturbed the scorpion staff and it fell unnoticed to the floor.
Gilan unslung his quiver and passed it, with his bow, to Hal.
“Mind this for me, please, Hal,” he said. He tossed his cloak back off his shoulders so that his arms were unencumbered, then his hand dropped to the hilt of the sword scabbarded on his left hip. It was smaller and shorter than the huge weapon the Shurmel was brandishing. But it had been forged and shaped by the armorers of the Ranger Corps, the men who fashioned the incredibly hard, incredibly sharp saxe knives that all Rangers carried.
Not that this was apparent in the way it looked. It was a simple, unadorned sword, with its hilt wrapped in practical leather, stained a little by perspiration from its owner’s hand. The crosspiece was a slightly curved piece of brass and a heavy knob of the same metal made up the pommel. The blade of the Shurmel’s sword was nearly half as long again as that of Gilan’s. But whereas the long sword’s blade was simple steel, the blade of the Ranger’s sword provided the only clue to its superior manufacture. It was slightly blued, and the surface of the steel was patterned in faint, wavy lines for its entire length.
It was a blade that matched the hardness and purity of the katanas wielded by the warriors of Nihon-Ja, or those fashioned by the fabled sword smiths of the Dimascarene warriors.
But the Shurmel had no knowledge of either of those groups. He saw before him a small, simple, weak-looking blade in the hands of, by comparison to his own mighty size and muscles, a small, slim and weak-looking man. And he laughed aloud.
It was a cruel laugh. A laugh that embodied all his sadistic, brutal nature. It was a laugh that showed no sign of doubt as to the outcome of the approaching combat. The Shurmel knew he would win. He would vanquish this impudent foreigner, and expunge his sacrilegious ideas. And he would reinforce his position as leader of the Scorpion cult for years to come. Buoyed by the approbation he would win from the rank and file members, he might even take the opportunity to remove the rebellious Taluf and his immediate followers.
The more he thought about it, the more the Shurmel realized that this ridiculous foreigner offered him a wonderful opportunity. Truly, he thought, he was a gift from the goddess Imrika. He raised his eyes to heaven and uttered a silent word of thanks for this gift.
And in doing so, he forgot to consider that Imrika was the goddess of destruction and her greatest gift was, all too often, death.
He stepped down from the dais to face the puny figure before him.
“To the death!” he shouted.
Gilan shrugged, an infuriating gesture under the circumstances.
“If you insist,” he said.
chapter forty-four
Without further warning, the Shurmel leapt forward at Gilan, his sword swinging high over his head in a two-handed grip, then sweeping down in a stroke that would have split the smaller man from head to waist.
Had the smaller man still been in the same position.
Gilan had been expecting the Shurmel to try a surprise attack. His eyes narrowed as he saw the massive sword sweep up. It was an obvious, and clumsy, move and for a fraction of a second he wondered if it was a feint, a deliberately awkward action designed to give him false confidence. But his expert perusal of the man’s stance and body language immediately negated the thought. It was a genuine attack, and not a very skillful one.
As the massive blade whistled down, Gilan simply swayed to one side, taking a half pace to remove himself from its path. His movement was barely noticeable, but none the less effective for all that. The sword cleaved the air half a meter from him, striking into the rock floor of the cavern with an echoing clang and sending sparks flying.
To the Shurmel, intent on delivering the last ounce of his strength and weight into the blow, it seemed that Gilan didn’t move at all. But somehow, the huge, body-cleaving blow missed. He roared in frustration and swung the long sword back horizontally, then sent it whistling through at waist height.
At what seemed the last moment, Gilan’s sword, propelled by his wrist, swung up and over in a half circle, slashing down onto the long sword, deflecting the immense power of the Shurmel’s strike so that the blade dropped from its intended path and shrieked against the stone floor once again, the teeth-jarring sound accompanied by more sparks.
To the two Skandians, standing watching the combat, it seemed that Gilan had avoided or deflected the Shurmel’s two overpowering strokes with an absolute minimum of movement or effort.
“He is seriously good at this,” Stig said softly. Hal nodded, not saying a word, watching intently as the combat resumed.
Trying to take advantage of the superior reach of his weapon, the Shurmel launched a clumsy lunge at the Ranger, his right foot rising, then stamping down to impart more force to the blow.
A triumphant cry rose from the throats of the watching Scorpion cult members.
Only to die away in confusion as Gilan’s sword, again propelled mainly by the iron muscles in his wrist, described a glittering half circle in the air, engaging the Shurmel’s blade with his own and deflecting it clear of his body.
Meeting no solid resistance, the Shurmel staggered forward, off balance, and felt the razor-sharp point of Gilan’s sword as it flicked up to touch his throat. A small runnel of blood came from the spot where it touched.
“We can stop this any time you like,” Gilan said calmly. He had the measure of his opponent now. The Shurmel was strong, blindingly strong. And he was fast. But he was clumsy and relatively unskilled in swordsmanship, relying on his power and size to overwhelm an opponent.
Gilan’s calmness, and the ease with which he had avoided injury so far, became a red rag to a bull. The Shurmel screamed in rage and frustration. With his left hand, he batted Gilan’s sword to one side, then swung the long sword in a diagonal arc at the Ranger.
This time, Gilan chose not to avoid or deflect the blow. He blocked it with his own sword, the two blades ringing together like a hammer blow on an anvil, the sound of their contact striking echoes from the stone walls. Only Stig, watching closely with an expert warrior’s eye, noticed how the Ranger’s blade, in the last millisecond before contact, didn’t simply remain static. Gilan’s wrist launched it in its own countermovement toward the Shurmel’s sword—traveling barely five centimeters, but building its own momentum to help counteract the power behind the Shurmel’s blow. Then, at the last moment, the Ranger’s grip tightened and created an unbreakable barrier.
A drawn-out cry of aaaaah! came from the watching assassins as the Shurmel struck. It died away in a cry of anguish as his blow was stopped by an iron-hard defense.
Stig whistled softly in admiration. It was an object lesson in technique and coordination, a simple movement that would hav
e taken months or even years to perfect until it became instinctive.
“I thought these people could only shoot,” he said to Hal.
The skirl shook his head. “Apparently not,” he replied. “They’re full of surprises, aren’t they?”
For the first time, Gilan went on the attack. He flicked his own sword up and over, striking at the Shurmel between the shoulder and the neck. The huge man staggered back clumsily, only just managing to avoid the stroke. Then, before he could recover, Gilan’s sword drove forward inside the other man’s reach, darting like a snake for his midsection. Again, only a frantic, last-minute leap backward saved the Shurmel’s life. The Shurmel’s massive sword gave him an advantage in reach, but now that Gilan was inside that reach, its size and weight became a drawback, making it clumsy and slow to wield.
Watching his opponent’s eyes, Gilan saw the first signs of doubt and fear. The Scorpion leader had expected a fast victory. He had planned to demolish his opponent with a few easy, devastating blows. But his best attacks had been met and countered, with almost contemptuous ease. The Shurmel had never faced a master swordsman before. Now, he realized, he was doing so for the first time.
Still concentrating on the big man’s eyes, Gilan saw a light of cunning emerge behind the doubt. The Shurmel was planning something, he realized, and he waited to see what it might be. Any moment now, he thought, seeing the resolve harden in the Shurmel’s expression.
The moment came. With a blinding flurry, the Shurmel described a bewildering pattern of movement with his hands, then, suddenly, he switched the massive sword to his left hand, instantly swinging it in a horizontal stroke from the new direction.
Gilan had been unaware what stratagem the Shurmel might attempt. But he knew from the man’s eyes and face that he was planning something unexpected, so he was prepared. His sword blade hammered into the Shurmel’s weapon, stopping it dead and leaving a deep notch in the long blade.
Again, those watching gave a great exhalation of despair. They had seen the Shurmel’s rapid pattern of deception, saw the sword appear in his other hand and expected an instant killing stroke. But the stranger had calmly blocked the left-handed blow.
And now they watched as Gilan began to rain blows down on the Shurmel, who managed to block and parry desperately as he moved back away from his attacker. The blows came with lightning speed and from every direction, one flowing into the other as Gilan, reasoning that the Shurmel would be even less skillful with the left hand than he was with the right, forced him back across the cavern. The blows rang and reechoed in a constant clash of steel on steel, the sound never seeming to stop, the strikes and the echoes blending into one long, continuous, blood-chilling sound of ringing steel.
And then the Ranger paused momentarily, as if tiring, and the Shurmel seized the brief respite to return his sword to his more capable right hand. As he flicked the sword from left to right, he realized, too late, that the Ranger had drawn a long, heavy-bladed knife from his left hip with his left hand.
Gilan stepped forward and slammed the saxe into the Shurmel’s unprotected ribs, driving the weapon in to the hilt.
The Shurmel’s eyes mirrored shock, then disbelief, then pain, in quick succession. Then his knees gave way under him and his eyes went completely blank as he collapsed to the stone floor.
And lay there, still as the grave.
Once again, a cry of anguish and disbelief was torn from the throats of those watching. Gilan stepped quickly away from the massive form sprawled on the cavern floor. He re-sheathed both his weapons with quick, smooth movements and retrieved his bow and quiver from Hal’s hands.
“Weapons, boys,” he said softly, and the two Skandians complied, Hal drawing his own sword and Stig flicking his battleax from its belt loop.
The Scorpions were stunned for some moments. Then an angry muttering began. Gilan nocked an arrow to his bow, but left the weapon undrawn for the moment.
“Kill them!” a voice roared from the congregation. “Kill them now!”
Gilan's eyes swept the room and lit upon the speaker. He was a scar-faced man in the second row. The Ranger had been wondering who would try to take control of the Scorpion cult. In a group like this, there was always someone who aspired to the leadership. He reasoned that it would be the first man to speak. And here he was.
Several of the scarlet-robed assassins began to move forward. But they moved uncertainly, faced by the triple threat of the ax, sword and longbow. None of them was armed with anything larger than a stiletto.
“Stay where you are!” Gilan ordered.
The men who had begun to move forward halted, in some awe of the stranger who had just defeated their mighty Shurmel. Now Gilan brought his bow up and drew the arrow back, aiming directly at the scar-faced man who had spoken.
“Try to take us,” he said in a quieter tone, “and I estimate that at least a dozen of you will die before you do. Is there any glory in dying that way? It won’t be for a tolfah. Your Shurmel chose to die for that, and the choice was his.” Then he made direct eye contact with Taluf, the scar-faced man. “And I promise you that the first one to die will be you,” he added.
He saw the sudden fear in the man’s eyes, replaced by a look of animal cunning, and sensed he had guessed correctly. This was the man who would seek to take the leadership position.
“On the other hand, this is your opportunity to take over the leadership here. To become the new Shurmel. All you have to do is order the others to stand aside while we leave.”
Now a new light came into the man’s eyes: calculation and ambition.
“Your choice,” Gilan said, driving home his advantage. “Let us go and you live. And you become Shurmel. Or you can order your men to stop us and you can die immediately.”
Calculation and ambition vied with uncertainty and hatred. Taluf studied Gilan’s calm face and saw no sign of hesitation there. He knew that if the Scorpions made a move toward the three men, he would die immediately. At this close range, the archer couldn’t possibly miss.
On the other hand, this stranger had created the opportunity for him to claim the Shurmel’s position. He had defeated the Shurmel in a fair challenge to end the tolfah.
It could be argued, and Taluf would argue this in the hours to come, that it had been Imrika’s will for the Shurmel to die. And when that course of action occurred to him, he made his decision. He held up a hand to the other Scorpions. Their eyes were all riveted on him now.
“Let them pass,” he said. “Imrika has shown us her will and your new Shurmel orders it.”
chapter forty-five
Working quickly, and with one eye on the oasis, the crew cleared the campsite of their personal possessions and loaded them back aboard the Heron. The ship was moored with her prow dug into the sand of the beach. A long stern line connected her to an anchor set in the bay offshore.
When the campsite was cleared of bedrolls, spare weapons and foodstuffs, Thorn gave the order for Jesper to untie the beach mooring line while Ingvar and Wulf hauled in on the stern hawser, dragging the little ship back into deeper water. When he was satisfied that there was sufficient distance between the ship and the beach, Thorn gestured for Ingvar and Wulf to tie off the line. The onshore wind held the ship in position, so that her bow remained facing the shore. Thorn checked her position and grunted with satisfaction.
“We’ll have to reattach the line to the bow when the wind veers at sunset,” he said. “I want to keep the bow facing the beach.”
“Why?” Jesper asked. “We’re safe enough here, no matter which way we’re facing.”
Thorn regarded him patiently. “If the bow is pointing at the beach, so is the Mangler,” he said, and understanding dawned in Jesper’s eyes.
“Oh. Of course,” he said. “I should have realized that.”
“Perhaps if you ever actually thought for a second or two before you
spoke, you might occasionally realize the obvious,” Thorn said.
Lydia had remained for’ard, her eyes sweeping the oasis for any sign of their former attackers. But the Ishti were staying well under cover. They had seen the effect of her atlatl darts and, having no idea as to the actual range of the weapon, deemed it prudent not to expose themselves to further attacks. From time to time, she glimpsed a brief sign of movement within the trees. She had no doubt that the enemy was watching them, waiting for a chance to make another move.
She’d been surveying the trees for over an hour, slumped comfortably in a patch of shade against the mast. Her constant focus was eventually rewarded.
She heard a faint thud of hoofbeats on the sand—a large number of hoofbeats. And, rising above the trees of the oasis, she saw a drifting cloud of dust. Putting the two facts together, she called to Thorn.
“Reinforcements! There are more horsemen in the oasis now.”
The shabby old warrior had been napping in the rowing well, out of the sun. He wished Hal hadn’t needed the canvas awning they used as a sun shelter on board the ship while she was at anchor, but it was the only material Hal could use as a sail for the land sailer. He rose now, buckling his belt and moving forward.
Not for the first time, Lydia wondered how such a bulky man could move so quietly when he chose to. He dropped to one knee beside her and she pointed at the oasis. The cloud of dust was dissipating now but it was still evident.
“They just rode in,” she explained. “You can see the dust cloud they raised and I could hear their hoofbeats.”
“Hmmm,” said Thorn thoughtfully, tugging at the shaggy edge of his beard. “Any idea how many?”
She hesitated. “Quite a few,” she said eventually. “More than a dozen, less than a hundred. But I’m only guessing there,” she added.