Thomas Greanias - The Promised War

Deker took a breath and waited. So did Elezar, keenly searching for any loopholes Bin-Nun might give him.

"First, you will make sure she binds a scarlet cord in the window through which she let you down and which you are about to climb up," Bin-Nun said. "This will be a sign to me that she hasn't betrayed you to Hamas. It will also be a sign for our troops to avoid her house when we storm the city walls. If she fails to do this, we will be blameless in her death."

Deker nodded. This was the very blood-on-the-doorposts Passover protection and sign of her faith in Yahweh that Rahab had been seeking all along.

Deker asked, "And the second condition?"

"She must bring her entire family into her house, or they will be slaughtered with the rest of the Reahns," Bin-Nun stated. "Whoever ventures outside the doors of her house into the street, his blood-or hers-shall be on his own head, and we will be guiltless. If any of our men lay a hand on her family inside her house, their blood will be on our head."

It was Deker's turn to glare at Elezar. "Got that?" he said, and turned his face to the walls of Jericho.

Deker could see the walls clearly as he and Elezar approached slowly and quietly in their camouflaged uniforms they had soiled with the dirt in which they now crawled. The concrete revetment wall ahead cut an even line across the sandy ground, the jagged brick wall above it rising into the dark. Every now and then, when a cloud broke to reveal a thin shaft of moonlight, he could glimpse the Reahn helmets and spears waiting for them atop the wall.

According to his calculations, Rahab's cellar window on the north wall was only thirty or so meters from the main gate around the corner at the east wall. So Deker used the gatehouse tower to his left and the forbidding city spire dead ahead as his markers all the way in. But the walls were coming up fast now, blocking his view of the markers, and the clouds were parting too much, forcing him and Elezar to move more quickly than they'd like to keep from being spotted overhead.

Deker dragged himself across the sand to the base of the wall when a dazzling white light from the sky stabbed the ground just behind him and in front of Elezar, who stopped cold just outside the patch of light.

Deker pressed his back against the rock and held his breath in the shadows. The ground was awash with moonlight now, brought by a break in the night clouds. Deker was aware of the crunch of boots and the sound of voices growing louder on the wall high above.

"Clear!" shouted one of the Reahn sentries.

"All clear!" repeated another sentry.

Soon Deker was standing up, back flat against the wall, staring out toward Gilgal and its awesome pillars of fire, waiting for Elezar. For a terrifying moment, Elezar looked as though he were sure he had been spotted and was about to do something stupid. But the shaft was cut off again by another cloud and Elezar made it over quickly in the dark.

"They can't see a damn thing with the fires, Elezar," Deker assured him in a low whisper. "We just have to keep quiet."

Deker turned and looked up the sheer face of the wall. There beyond his view was Rahab's window. All he needed to do was climb the wall, pull himself through the window in Rahab's cellar and then drop Elezar a rope. The reddish brick wall that began five meters overhead was uneven enough that an experienced climber like himself could manage it without much difficulty.

It was the first five meters-that damn concrete revetment wall-that was the problem. Deker dropped his pack, pulled off his boots and tied them to his belt. Then he picked up the axe inside his sack that Kane had packed.

"I need to stand on your shoulders," Deker told Elezar, who nodded as he breathed harder and louder than Deker would have preferred.

Elezar bent over and Deker climbed onto his back until he stood on his shoulders.

The top of the revetment wall formed a tiny ledge at the base of the brick wall above. It was just out of his reach.

Deker slid his hand behind his back to his belt and pulled out the axe. He raised it as high as he could, his feet shifting as Elezar moved beneath him, and hooked the axe head on the ledge. It held sufficiently for him to pull himself high enough to grab the ledge with his other hand.

He could feel Elezar fall away from him. He then dropped the axe and grabbed the ledge with both hands, swinging one foot up. With three points of contact he was able to pull his entire body up, belly flat against the wall, arms spread wide.

Deker caught his breath and slowly made his way up the wall, digging his fingers and toes into any solid crevice he could find. Some crevices were more solid than others, and at one point halfway up a brick gave way and he lost his footing, leaving him hanging by two fingers. He looked down to see the broken pieces crash to the ground, where there was no sign of Elezar.

The sound of the falling brick must have alerted the sentries overhead, because he could see a couple of torches above him.

"They just reinforced that section last season," said a Reahn sentry, from what Deker could gather.

"I'm not reporting it" was the reply of a second sentry. "Hamas might make me go out and fix it."

A third sentry laughed. "Afraid some Hebrew is going to reach up from the shadows and grab you by the ankles and drag you down to hell?"

It was a thought. But Deker was too far down the wall for that, and still hanging by his two fingertips while his foot searched for a toehold. With immense relief he found one a moment later. Once he was sure the sentries were gone, he continued to work his way up the ragged brick wall until he could see the shape of an open square window above him.

He paused, sweat dripping into his eyes, and realized that he could be wrong about this window, despite what he had told Bin-Nun. It might not be the same window that Rahab had lowered him out of.

Lord, help me, he prayed, knowing full well that he had already committed himself at this point to entering this window. Before Deker had even thought to pray, the good Lord would have had to rearrange the entire architecture of Jericho to suddenly make this Rahab's window if he was wrong. Which seemed ludicrous to Deker. I'll never have the faith of Abraham.

Cautiously, he raised himself up so he could look inside. But it was too dark to make out anything. He listened for a moment. Then, detecting no sound, he crawled through the window and into the cellar hewn out of the city wall.

With immense relief he realized that this was, indeed, Rahab's cellar. He took a breath, said a silent prayer of thanks and began to look for the rope that Rahab had used to let them down before so he could help Elezar up.

He found the rope coiled in a corner among the jars and skeletons. He never thought he'd be so happy to see those Reahn skeletons again. He picked up the rope and turned toward the window to let it down for Elezar.

But as he moved toward the square of stars, a big shadow moved in front of the window. A feeling of blind panic seized Deker as all the skeletons in the room seemed to step toward him.

Then the grillwork behind him opened and he saw a hooded figure holding an oil lamp. The hood came down and he saw Rahab, dressed much more modestly than during their first encounter.

"Rahab," he said, starting toward her.

But she said nothing, looking over his shoulder.

Her oil lamp flickered and Deker looked around the dimly illuminated cellar. He was surrounded by four Reahn soldiers.

They must have been waiting for me as soon as they saw the pillars of fire go up at Gilgal and knew the Israelites had crossed the Jordan.

Rahab pointed at him and told the soldiers, "This is the Hebrew spy."