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."