“I’m keeping it.”
“You’re what?”
“That’s the best knife I have ever seen. I’m keeping it. Why just give it to Risberg? You know he would just keep it for himself. Remember that pistol from the scout Byan killed?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. It could be important.”
Timo stood. “Don’t make a big deal. It’s just a knife.” He started toward the village again.
They stopped eight hundred meters from the wall.
“Team-three to sentry commander on channel three,” Alyd spoke into the walkie-talkie.
“Sentry commander on three.”
“Approaching south gate.”
“Clear.”
When they were one hundred meters from the gate the electrical flood lights came on. Timo and Alyd pulled back their parkas and exposed their faces, and the lights were extinguished. As he approached, Timo could see the silhouettes of the sentries examining them through their rifle scopes from the top of the wall.
The wall around the village stood ten meters high, some of it wood, most of it stone. During times when the clan felt threatened, like now, sentries were posted every five hundred meters along the top of the wall during the day, except near the gates where there were twice as many. At night a sentry stood every one hundred meters. The west side wall, which faced in the direction of the riverbed, stretched fifteen hundred meters long. The north and south walls were two times as long. The east side’s composition was two walls that came to a point. Timo heard the lock clunk, and the gate swung open just enough to let them pass.
Once through the gate, Timo saw his commanding officer, Lieutenant Risberg, a high-strung demagogue wannabe, approaching. Timo and Alyd stood at attention and saluted. To their surprise he stepped aside and behind him appeared General Bartel, an ox of a man. He was the highest-ranking military officer of the army and Tower security.
“At ease,” the general said. “Give me your report, soldier.”
“We spotted an enemy scout trying to cross the river in sector twenty-seven. We neutralized the contact and then performed intel retrieval, sir,” Timo said.
“What intel did you recover?”
Timo took the backpack off his shoulder and handed it to the general. “There is a walkie-talkie inside. I’ve never seen anything like it before, sir.”
The general unzipped the pack and looked inside, removed the walkie-talkie, examined it briefly, and placed it back inside. “Anything else?”
Timo could feel the weight of the knife in the inside pocket of his parka. I hope Alyd doesn’t stay too mad. “Yes, sir. The scout was Asus, but dressed like a Denock.”
The general crinkled his brow. “Where is he now?”
Timo looked at Alyd, who had the same surprised expression. “What do you mean, sir?” Alyd asked.
“The body. Where is it now?”
“We left him where he fell, sir,” Timo replied.
“What?”
“We were told to do normal intel retrieval, sir. Nothing else,” Alyd said.
The general snapped his head around to the lieutenant. “Send another team out for the body, now!”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant replied and ran for his radio.
The general glared at Timo and Alyd, slung the backpack over his shoulder, turned on his heels, and walked away without another word.
Chapter 2
In the Denock encampment, fifty kilometers from the Tower, anxious men sat around a table. The sunrise would be in two hours. The wind screamed, hurled blowing snow sideways, and beat itself against the walls and ceiling of the long house tent. Inside, kerosene lanterns sat on tables and hung from the age-darkened tent poles. Sjund shared a meal with the eight elder members of the Denock clan. Across the table were the leaders of the Asus clan.
The Asus were from the far west, beyond the mountains and beyond the great desert on the other side of the mountains. They were muscular and tall; some of them had only deer and bison hide for clothing. Their skin gleamed oily and dark. They came east during the growing season to hunt wild game and collect berries. In recent years, the game had become scarce and the snow stayed on the ground longer, so they ventured farther east. They had known about the clan with the Tower behind the wall for generations, and they feared both the Tower and wall. Usually, they would make quick hit-and-run attacks, to steal cattle and horses from the villagers who lived outside the wall, then they would quickly return west for the winter. They had seen the floodlights during the night when they dared to approach too close. The soldiers feared it; surely the clan inside must possess magic and superior weapons.
Along the walls of the tent, well-armed soldiers from each clan stared at each other. The eldest leader of the Denock clan, Tristan, had long, salt and pepper hair and a full beard. His shoulders were broad and thick, not muscular but not fat. He sat next to Sjund, fifteen years younger than Tristan, thin but athletic. Sjund wore the same thing as the Denock elders, a brown leather parka and pants, each lined with bison fur.
“Your man is late,” Tristan said to his Asus counterpart, named Taavi.
The orange light of a lantern on the table reflected off Taavi’s white hair and beard. It cast shadows along the black creases in his face and reflected off his eyes, which were dingy yellow around the irises. “If the information provided is good, he will succeed,” Taavi replied. “Tomorrow night all the High Council members will be dead. We will begin our attack. By morning, if Sjund’s bomb works as you claim, and can make a hole as big as you say, we’ll be eating breakfast in the Tower.”
All the elders ate in silence. A radio, like the one the assassin took with him, sat in the middle of the table. They waited for the transmission that would inform them he had slipped inside the wall. Sjund had drawn a map of the location of a crevasse in the wall, just wide enough for a man to squeeze through and crawl his way inside. Once through the wall he would emerge in a small alleyway behind the horse stables. The stable house roof blocked the view into the alley from atop the wall. The assassin’s plan was to hide in the stable, in the rafters or an unoccupied stall, change into civilian clothes, conceal his dark face and hands, and wait until he received radio contact informing him that the initial assault platoons were in place and undetected. After nightfall he would kill the elders in the Tower and radio his commander that the leaders were dead, and the attack would begin. From the stables the Tower stood less than three hundred meters away, and the entry to the secret tunnel that led to it was one hundred meters away.
“Were you not impressed with the small demonstration we gave you?” Sjund asked.
“Blowing an old tree stump out of the ground is one thing—that wall is different,” Taavi said.
“The bomb I’m going to make will be many times greater in size than the one I showed you. If it doesn’t outright collapse the wall, it will blow a hole big enough for your men to enter five abreast. But your men must keep the forces along that section of the wall occupied long enough for me to make the bomb at the base of the wall,” Sjund said.
Taavi looked at Sjund warily. “What’s the name of this material you say possesses enough power to do this?”
“Nitroglycerin.”
“How did you learn to make such a weapon?”
“In the Tower, there’s a room—the historical room, with many books, very, very old books. I found it in one of them.”
“If it’s so powerful why doesn’t the clan behind the wall have it?” Taavi asked.
“The ingredients