Thomas Greanias - The Promised War

"Change of plans," Elezar said, and stopped suddenly as he took in what was left of Deker's theater of war.

Deker stood there motionless, his fist loosening just enough to let his Reahn battle-axe hit the ground with a thud.

Elezar stared down at the dead rider and dying horse with a look of horror and fascination. Deker watched his superior officer's eyes drift up his blood-soaked body until they locked on his own.

"Maybe I was wrong about you, Deker. You might make a good Jew yet."

Dazed, Deker gazed at the blood all over himself, human and horse. The cold-blooded brutality of such close combat was very different from the relatively detached, remote-control work of bombs and the instant disintegration of body parts they caused. He had seen the results of his handiwork before, but rarely inflicted death with his own bloody hands.

Deker hated death almost as much as himself for his efficiency at dispensing it. That his own life was at stake, and even the future of his people, did little to lessen his guilt and self-loathing.

Now, as he took in his handiwork, the old nausea was coming back as it had at the scene of Rachel's death. Several had been killed in that blast, and he had refused to look. But he had seen a mangled limb fried to a cinder, and while he had told himself it wasn't Rachel's, it could have been, and he could not sleep for almost two months afterward.

"Deker!" Elezar spoke, bringing him out of his daze. "Clean yourself up."

Elezar tossed him a dirty tunic to use as a rag.

"You're a bloody mess," Elezar told him. "Your cover garb is of no use to us now. You're going to have to piece together a uniform from the body parts you've scattered around here. We'll go in as soldiers and use their papers to get through the gate."

As Deker mopped up blood, a muffled roar of pain came from deep within the dying horse. To Deker's amazement, the horse valiantly struggled back on its feet.

"Step back," he told Elezar.

Wiping the blood from his eyes, Deker swore and took his blade, plunging it into the horse's side to put them both out of their misery. The horse collapsed and disappeared beneath the tops of the stalks. The shimmering field of grain was calm and peaceful again, as if horses and riders had never been.

But it wouldn't hide the carnage for long, Deker thought as he looked at the broken grain stalks around him, covered with blood. Already a lone raven circled overhead like some Predator drone. Soon there would be more crows. A black cloud would hover over the fields like a column of dark smoke rising into the air, a beacon to any and all atop Jericho's watchtowers.

"We're losing time, Deker," Elezar said impatiently.

Deker looked at the noonday sun. Elezar was right. They'd be lucky to get in before the gates closed at sunset. Luckier still to make it out before the Reahns knew one of their patrols hadn't reported back and was missing. Before long the hunt would be on for them. They had to clean up and get out before anybody spotted them.

Unfortunately, somebody already had.

Behind Elezar, Deker saw a small face in the stalks, eyes wide open. It was a boy, no older than ten, staring at the bloody clothes on the ground and the dead horse and soldier.

Before Deker could speak, Elezar's hand plunged into the stalks and pulled out the screaming boy by the hair before he quickly shut him up with a hand over his mouth and a blade to his throat.

"No!" Deker told Elezar, watching the boy squirm in Elezar's arms. "He's just a boy, a kid who works in the fields."

Elezar began to press the blade into the small, tender throat, and the boy's wild eyes grew even wider. "He has a mouth, doesn't he? If we let him go, we might as well blow the warning horns from the towers of Jericho ourselves."

"He's a boy, Elezar."

"Yes, and in our time he'd probably be strapped with explosives, and we'd already be dead."

"But this isn't our time."

"It is now, Deker, and you know it."

Deker paused and took a breath. With each passing second the sun was moving faster and the shadows of the walls were growing longer. "We tie and gag him," he finally said. "The end is the same: we've kept him quiet long enough for us to get inside the city before the gates close."

Elezar squinted at him in what Deker could only interpret as profound disappointment and even disgust. "I take back what I said just now about you being a good Jew," he said, putting his blade away and instead tightening his bare hands around the boy's neck in a chokehold. The boy struggled to breathe. "But I need you for this mission."

Elezar's hands squeezed hard until they crushed the boy's windpipe and he collapsed to the ground. Deker ran to the prostrate child and bent over the pale, bluish face struggling for air. The boy had a pulse but looked like he didn't know it.

"You're a heartless son of a bitch, Elezar."

"He'll live to see tomorrow, Deker. Which is more than I can say for you and me unless we move our asses."

Jericho. City of the Moon. Reah, as the Reahns who worshiped the celestial and lunar deities called it. The city looked like a piece of the moon had crashed to earth in the middle of a tropical oasis. Its walls seemed to rise more than fifty meters above the surrounding palm trees. The late-afternoon sun only lengthened the walls' ominous shadows-and shortened the time Deker and Elezar had to make it to the main gate before it closed at dusk.

They rode side by side along the wide entrance road, dressed in the uniforms of the Reahn soldiers they had killed and buried back in the fields. They had passed a couple of chariots and a number of oxen pulling empty carts. The farmers had already brought their goods to market and were returning. Now the traffic was heavier flowing out of the city than in. That would only draw more attention to them when they tried to enter the city gate.

More fortress than city, Jericho's profile resembled a giant aircraft carrier cut from a single rock. All the fortifications were aimed at the single main gate in its narrow eastern wall at the bow, pointed like the barrel of a giant cannon at any who approached her.

The monolithic walls began to separate into two as the road bent to reveal the main gate. Deker could see that there were really two walls around the city.

The lower outer wall ringed the base of the city mound. It boasted an impressive five-meter-high concrete revetment skirt at the base. The rest of the outer wall, comprising red bricks, rose another ten meters to the parapets on top, where uniformed soldiers with gleaming spears marched between two stone watchtowers on the north and south walls.

The city's higher inner wall ringed the fortress at its summit. This wall was almost fifteen meters high and also built of red bricks, with two additional stone towers on its east and west walls. All the towers had slits for the archers. They might as well be housing machine guns, Derek thought, because either way the targets of their fire would be shredded to death in seconds.

Jericho's layers of defense at first glance were proving to be far more impressive than Deker had anticipated. So shocked was Deker at this level of engineering that he once again doubted if he was in fact in ancient times or dreaming all this up. The challenge taking shape both perturbed him and yet strangely excited him.

Soaring high above the city's walls and the four watchtowers was Jericho's landmark octagonal spire. It resembled a giant Muslim minaret with a watchtower on top, and afforded the Reahn army 360-degree visibility of all lines of approach. From that vantage, Deker didn't doubt the Reahns could see the pillar of smoke from the Israelite camp at Shittim.

He also doubted that anybody up there could miss him and Elezar as they rode up to the wide stone ramp leading to Jericho's massive and iconic iron gate.