18

16th Side: Windsor to the Dark Tower Came

The two Land Rovers came to a halt on the slope below the tower’s crag. Out of the tower’s gate, and down the crag’s steep path, came a crowd of women and children, led by Isobel, who held out her hands to Windsor, smiling and chattering at him.

“She’s sorry for everything,” Joe said. “She hopes you’re going to enjoy the meal.” He hadn’t caught everything Isobel had said, but he supposed it would be something like that. She’d certainly said something about “maht,” which he’d at first taken to mean “meat” but had since learned meant any kind of food.

Bryce was looking from his men, climbing out of the Land Rovers with their rifles, to the Sterkarm women and children milling about them. Some of the girls were very pretty, as his men were noticing. The girls, smiling, were reaching out to touch the camouflage sleeves and even touching the rifles, confident that they would be allowed to. Others lifted up small children to see the Land Rovers.

Bryce didn’t know whether or not to be reassured. He didn’t trust the Sterkarms—but he knew them to be protective of their children and women, as most peoples were anywhere, anytime. The fact that he and his men had been invited here, to the tower, into the midst of the women and children, seemed to suggest that the Sterkarms were, for once, acting in good faith. It might be a bluff—but it was a pretty foolhardy bluff if it got your children killed. And Old Man Sterkarm had been keen on aspirin … On the whole, and while trying to stay wary, Bryce believed the Sterkarms when they said they only wanted to talk and make friends again.

He could see Old Toorkild Sterkarm, his head close to the head of the man in the 21st waterproof, the one who spoke such suspiciously good English. Waterproof came over to them, pushing his way through the curious women and children. “If you’ll all come inside,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the tower, “there’s a feast set in the hall—a friendship feast. You’re all invited.”

The 21st men at the Land Rovers started grinning. “A party!” one of them called out, and Bryce said, “Quiet!”

“A friendship feast!” Windsor said, and nodded and smiled at Mrs. Sterkarm. “That sounds splendid!” It was the kind of thing you had to say, even though he had clear memories of how terrible Sterkarm food was. Still, the Sterkarms’ eagerness to make amends was going to make the food a lot tastier this time around. It was gratifying to see them realize that they’d gone too far. If young Sterkarm could be made to apologize too, it’d be better than a meal at a four-star restaurant. “We accept.”

Bryce was startled to hear that but, before he could speak, Joe said, “Don’t mind me saying so, but we’d like it—well, it’d look friendlier if you left your guns outside. We laid—”

“Wait a minute,” Bryce said. “Where are my men? Where is Andrea Mitchell?”

“Inside,” Joe said.

“Let’s see them out here,” Bryce said. “Let’s see that they’re alive and unhurt, and then we’ll talk about going inside.”

Joe’s mind was working harder and faster than he’d needed it to work for years. The strain made his heart beat faster. “They’re hurt.” He saw Bryce and Windsor look alarmed. “Not Andrea. She’s—helping get the food ready. But the men, they got a bit hurt.”

“How much is ‘a bit’?” Bryce said.

“One got bashed on the head.” Joe remembered the axe bashing down. “They all got knocked about a bit. You know how it is. Things got out of hand. People got overexcited. Toorkild’s very sorry. He wasn’t there, or he’d have stopped it.” At the back of Joe’s mind, he knew that these lies were going to get more men hurt but were going to keep Sterkarms from being hurt. He hadn’t time to think about which was more right, or more wrong. “They’re being cared for. Toorkild’s very sorry about it. But if you want to see ’em, you’re going to have to come inside.”

Bryce looked at Windsor. “I don’t like this.”

Windsor tucked his swagger stick under his arm. He saw the risk but hated appearing to be under Bryce’s command.

“We ain’t going to hurt you,” Joe said. “Not with all the women and bairns running about. This is our home. What would we hurt you with, anyway? We left most of our weapons up there, on the hill.”

There was a small child standing right at Windsor’s feet, peering up at him. And the Sterkarms had seen the power of the Elves. They’d seen the Tube made operational again after they’d destroyed it. “We’re going to get nowhere standing out here, pulling faces at each other,” Windsor said. It was undignified, this bickering on the hillside. But strolling into the Sterkarms’ den and making yourself comfortable—well, as comfortable as you could make yourself on Sterkarm furniture—that had a certain panache. To Bryce, he said, “We’ll go in.”

“And leave the guns outside?” Joe said. “To show good feeling. We laid down our weapons.” He felt he was pushing his luck too far, but he couldn’t do the Sterkarms a greater service than getting those rifles laid down.

Bryce held himself back from refusing outright. That would only antagonize Windsor as well as the Sterkarms. “I’d strongly advise against it, Mr. Windsor. They outnumber us. The safety catches are on.”

“But better safe than sorry,” Joe said. “It’s all these little kids I’m thinking of. This is someone’s home you’re going into. I’m not asking you to give your guns up—leave ’em here, put a guard on ’em. Just for while you’re in the tower. Just to show friendly.”

Bryce went close to Windsor. “It’s too risky.”

Windsor could see Toorkild watching them. He didn’t want to give the old savage the satisfaction of knowing that he could intimidate them. He didn’t want to give Bryce the satisfaction of nannying him. “Sometimes you just have to take a risk.”

You’re telling me? Bryce thought. “Mr. Windsor, they’re taking you in there.”

Bryce pointed, and Windsor looked up at the square gray-red tower rising against the sky. It threw a qualm into Windsor, and at once made him still more determined to prove he was right by going ahead. He refused to behave like a coward. The bloodied severed head flashed into his memory again—but it hadn’t been the head of an Elf. “We’re going in,” he said, “and we’re leaving the rifles out here.”

“James—”

“I’m in charge!”

“Shit!” Bryce couldn’t let Windsor go in there alone. Nor could he leave the guns out here with no better guard over them than a few security guards and an ex-corporal. But he had to do one or the other.

He went over to the nearest Land Rover, unslung his rifle from his shoulder and dropped it onto the Land Rover’s metal floor. “You, you, you!” Bryce rapidly counted out nine men. “Guns down here.” Only one or two of them began unslinging their rifles. The others looked at each other, spoke, muttering. Either they all shared his fears or they just didn’t want to give up their toys. Bryce was infuriated by their insubordination. “Do it! I didn’t ask for a discussion!” He watched them as, with sour faces, they put their rifles, one by one, on the floor of the Land Rover. “Skipton!”

“Sir!”

Skipton was one of the ex-soldiers, and one of the ten men left still holding rifles. “I’m leaving you in charge here. You guard the guns and the Land Rovers, okay?” Skipton nodded.

Bryce turned to Windsor. “Let’s go.” Under Bryce’s camouflage jacket, in a shoulder holster, he had an old Browning pistol, thirteen shots in its mag. Could be enough if things got outrageous.

Andrea had heard the sound of the Land Rovers’ engines, and then the sound of the horses being led through the tower’s lanes to their stables. She’d gone to the window but hadn’t been able to see anything. The windows on the top story, in Toorkild and Isobel’s private rooms, were the largest in the tower, but they were still small. If you looked straight out, they gave a good view of the surrounding hills and the valley below, but it was all but impossible to look down from them and see what was happening in the tower’s yard, or just outside its walls. The roofs, the wall, got in the way.

She could shout, of course. Take a big breath and yell, as loud as she could: “They’re going to ambush you!” Her heart started beating faster at the thought of it, and she felt breathless and ill.

It was what she’d said she would do.

It was easy to talk.

She didn’t know who was out there—she couldn’t see. If there were car engines, then there must be people from the 21st, but had they come armed, as she’d feared, or did they just have briefcases and five-year business forecasts?

What if she shouted, and alarmed the Sterkarms into turning on the 21st men and killing them?

What if the 21st men had come armed, and her shout made them open fire on the Sterkarms and gun them down, women, children and all?

Either way, it would be her fault.

She went back to the hearth and sat in Toorkild’s chair. A fire burned in the hearth, and she had a box of fuel to feed it. There was meat, bread and ale on the table. Both Toorkild and Isobel were angry with her, but she was still a guest under their roof. And still thought of, she feared, by some, as their son’s future wife.

She got up again. She couldn’t sit there, warm, by a fire, while murder might be going on outside. She listened at the window again, and heard voices but not what they were saying. She could see tiny sheep moving distantly, in the valley, but not the people a few feet below.

She walked around the table, around and around. People were going to be hurt. Had Per been hurt? He’d been up on the hill when the Elves had come through.

This whole project must have seemed such a good idea on paper. Go in, get the gold, the oil, the gas, make a profit. It was always people who loused things up.

Joe’s heart was swollen and tight in his chest, and yet it was rattling away in there with a painful rapidity and force. The soldiers had given up their rifles, but he didn’t suppose they’d given up every weapon. In a couple of minutes, he could be dead.

They’d come through the tower gate and were getting close to the tower itself. Toorkild was on one side of him, slightly ahead; and Windsor on the other, slightly behind. Bryce was behind Windsor, and behind him came the soldiers and the Sterkarms. Joe, remembering that he should be seeming happy and relaxed, tried to smile at Windsor but felt his face freeze into a grimace.

As they reached the tower door, Bryce called out, “Wait!”

Toorkild stopped in the act of opening the door.

“I’ll go in first,” Bryce said. Behind him the rabble of Sterkarms and 21st men filled the yard in front of the tower, and crowded the alleys leading to it.

Toorkild must have guessed his meaning, because he grinned through his beard, stood aside and waved for Bryce to go into the tower before him.

Bryce edged to the door, leaning against its doorpost and keeping well back from the opening while he peered into the shadows inside. His hand was inside his jacket, on the grip of his pistol. With his free hand, he beckoned to one of his men. “Go in.”

“Me?” the man said.

“Go in,” Bryce said. The man looked around at his colleagues, and then at Bryce again. “That’s an order,” Bryce said. “Were you expecting a walk in the park?”

Slowly, as if his boots were filled with concrete, the man came forward to the tower’s door. He hesitated, and looked at Bryce, but then fear of his colleagues’ contempt, or fear of losing his job, or both, overcame his fear of what was in the tower. He leaped in through the door.

The Sterkarms standing in the yard laughed genially. Inside the tower, the security guard was walking about, kicking up the straw on the floor. He started laughing himself. “Nothing in here but shit.”

Bryce leaned in at the door to check for himself. The ground floor of the tower was dark, lit only by the light from the low, narrow door, which was blocked by Bryce himself. Fragments of light played on the upper walls, and over the curved barrel vault of the ceiling. There was a sweet, rank smell of horse dung.

“Check the stairs,” Bryce said. He watched the man come toward him, to the foot of the stairs that rose from just inside the left-hand side of the door. It was a job he should be doing himself. He didn’t like sending this poor dim herbert into danger, but if he did the brave thing and got killed, who’d watch Windsor’s stupid back?

The stairs were guarded by a heavy iron grid, which the man pulled back with a sound of metal scraping on stone. He peered into the dark, narrow stairway. “Nobody here.”

Toorkild, leaning at the other side of the door with his arms folded, grinned indulgently at Bryce and asked him—as far as Bryce understood—whether he was gladdened now. “Not yet,” Bryce said. He moved into the cool shadows of the tower’s ground floor and took up a position at the foot of the stairs. “Go on up,” he said to the guard. “Have a look around the corner.”

The man looked at him, swallowed hard but started to climb, moving his hand up the plaster. As he got closer to the turn in the stairs, he moved slower and slower, looking around the bend at the few stairs ahead with nothing but the corner of one eye. Half of him disappeared, and Bryce beckoned another man forward. “Stand here. Yell if anybody moves.”

Bryce climbed the stairs after the first man. The first few steps were lit by light from the doorway, but then they curved and became dark, until they turned another curve of the spiral—and then light appeared again, through a narrow slit in the wall. Looking up, Bryce saw light spilling down from the landing, partly shadowed by the man ahead of him. “What d’you see?”

“Nothing,” the man said.

Bryce moved up alongside him. Together, they blocked the stairs. Ahead was the small square landing, grayly lit by one slit window. The door into the hall was standing open, letting through a little more light. Beyond the open door, on the other side of the landing, the dark stairs continued up.

A man came to the open door, leaned on the post and grinned at them.

Bryce pushed his man out onto the landing, while he took up a position at the top of the stairs. “Go and check those stairs out.” As his man crossed the landing, Bryce watched the Sterkarm in the doorway.

The Sterkarm watched the man pass him with friendly curiosity and then, when the security man had vanished into the darkness of the farther stair, grinned at Bryce instead.

“Down there,” Bryce called. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” came the shout from below.

Echoing footsteps on the farther stair, and the 21st man came back down. “Nothing up there,” he said. “Just a locked door at the top. Nobody about.”

“Fine,” Bryce said, gesturing toward the hall door. “Have a look in there.”

The security guard was more relaxed now, but he approached the hall door a little warily, because of the man leaning there. Seeing his nervousness, the Sterkarm grinned again, shouldered himself off the wall and went back inside the hall. The security guard stuck his head around the door.

“Anybody near the door?” Bryce asked. “How many people?”

“No. Five or six. Five. And a woman.”

Mention of a woman made Bryce feel very slightly happier. “Okay. Come back to the stairs.” As his man came back to the top of the stairs, Bryce went forward to look into the hall himself. It was set out as if for a meal, with long trestle tables laid with jugs and platters of bread. A fire was burning in the hearth, and something was boiling in a big pot. But the woman in the hall was Andrea. She was sitting right at the far end, at a table placed across the room. She saw him, she lifted her head and sat straighter, but then she looked at the big man sitting beside her before, again, staring down the length of the hall at Bryce.

When he backed out of the hall, back to the top of the stairs, he still wasn’t sure whether she’d been trying to warn him or signal to him that everything was all right. Certainly the hall seemed to be prepared for a meal, just as the Sterkarms had promised.

“Stay here,” Bryce said to his man, and went back down the stairs. Just inside the doorway of the tower, Toorkild and Isobel were waiting, their arms around each other. Windsor was beside them. Unable to talk, they were nodding and smiling at each other. “It all seems okay,” Bryce said, “but I’d still be happier if we stayed outside.”

“Toorkild just wants to be friends,” Joe said. He spoke too quickly for Bryce’s liking.

Windsor said, “For God’s sake, Bryce!” and laughed. He felt much easier now Bryce had checked the tower out, but he wasn’t going to admit to ever having felt nervous. “Here’s Mrs. Sterkarm, going in with us. How much reassurance do you need?”

Bryce’s mind ranged over possibilities. Now that Windsor had committed them to this, there weren’t many options. He stood back and gestured to the stairs.

Toorkild, with a forgiving smile, handed Isobel to the stairs ahead of him, and himself led the way for Windsor, who was followed by Joe. Bryce went next, to keep close to Windsor, but he waved to his men to come on in after him.

So many people were a tight fit on the narrow stairs. Their hands, moving on the wall, touched; they trod on each other’s heels and jostled each other with their knees. The musty, sour smell of the Sterkarms was also unpleasantly noticeable in the enclosed space. Windsor was just wishing they could climb faster, when Toorkild stopped at the small window, his large body completely blocking the way. He pointed to the window, smiled at Windsor, and said something.

Windsor smiled back, irritably aware that Isobel was continuing on up the stairs ahead of them. The window was so small that he couldn’t look through it until Toorkild leaned aside. When he did, he couldn’t see anything except a scrap of sky and some thatched roofs. He turned to Joe, behind him, hoping for a translation.

Joe smiled. He hadn’t understood a word Toorkild had said, hadn’t really tried. He was too nervous.

“What’s the holdup?” Bryce asked.

“Nothing, nothing,” Joe said, and Toorkild murmured something in a comforting tone.

Below them the 21st men were pushing in through the tower’s door, pushed in by the Sterkarms jostling behind them. Since the stair was blocked, the men had to spread across the tower’s ground floor, forming into a ragged line for the stairs. Farther in and farther they crammed, until some of them reached the cold stone of the far wall. And then the small, cold room darkened. Looking up, the men saw a moving shadow—the patch of light on the upper part of the wall was shifting, shrinking as the tower door closed.

The 21st men shouted, lunged for the door. One, reaching it, was punched in the face and went backward into the tower, with a bleeding nose. The tower door was pulled shut from outside, slammed into its stone setting. Its key was turned from outside.

As the voices from below rose in panic, Toorkild turned and hurried on up the stairs to the landing and the door into the hall. Reaching behind, he grabbed Windsor by the arm, urged him on up the last few steps and shoved him into the hall.

Joe, behind Windsor, was yanked upward by Toorkild’s sudden, tight grip on his arm. He was almost lifted from his feet as Toorkild shoved him in front of himself, into the hall, and pressed in after him. Men waiting inside the hall flung the door shut.

The door, heavy and wooden, slammed shut, with an echoing din, in Bryce’s face. He had his hand inside his jacket, on the grip of his Browning pistol—but he was left without a target.

The man he’d left on guard at the top of the stairs was sprawled on the stone floor of the landing, looking dazed. “Get up!” Bryce said.

From below came the dismally echoing shouts of the men trapped on the stairs. From farther below, on the ground floor, came the sounds of fists and feet banging on the locked door. The sound boomed and rebounded from the stone walls.

Bryce felt the thick stone of the tower enclose him. Sterkarms above them, and Sterkarms outside. Exactly what he’d feared, what he’d tried to warn Windsor about.

He went to the narrow landing window and tried to see what was going on below the tower, but could see little except the matched roofs of outhouses. A breeze blew in through the unglazed window, carrying a spatter of cold rain. The cold light the slit admitted lit Bryce’s face, and little else. Behind him the landing and stair were in deep shadow.

What to do?

He had a pistol, some plastic explosive and some grenades.

They had Windsor, Andrea and the captured security men—supposing that any of those people were still alive.

Things were getting outrageous.

Windsor, dragged into the hall, jerked half from his feet, laughed, thinking it some sort of horseplay. He didn’t like it but thought he ought to laugh along with it, to show that he could take a joke.

Laughing, he turned to find the door of the hall shut, and a thick bar of wood dropped across it, and himself alone among many Sterkarm men, who looked big, hairy, grimy and threatening even when there wasn’t any special reason to fear them. Toorkild was looking at him with no trace of laughter. Windsor looked around for nice Mrs. Sterkarm.

Long trestle tables ran the length of the room—but men were already moving the jugs and platters from them and putting them on the floor around the hearth. Other men lifted the boards and stacked them against the walls, or folded the trestles. As Windsor watched, alarmed, the center of the floor was cleared, exposing a wooden trapdoor at the center of the stone floor and giving him a clear view of the hearth, where a large pot was suspended over the fire. White steam coiled from the pot, together with smoke.

Trying to turn fright into anger, Windsor demanded, “What’s going on?”

Joe was feeling hilarious. It was the way Toorkild had yanked him, flying, into the room, and the audacity of what the Sterkarms had done. “You’ve been stitched up like a kipper, pal, that’s what’s going on!” He lifted his feet in a heavy dance. “Makes a change, eh? How’s it feel? How’s it feel to be the one that’s stitched up for once?”

Windsor goggled at him, understanding only that he was in trouble, perhaps even in danger—and before he had time to think any further, he spotted Mrs. Sterkarm. She was at the back of the room, standing with Andrea. He shouted at Andrea, “What’s going on?”

All Andrea knew for sure was that, a little while ago, she’d been released from the upper floor and brought down to the hall, where she’d glimpsed Bryce in the doorway. When she’d asked what was going on, Sweet Milk had smiled, pointed to the tables and said, “We’re going to have a feast.”

She’d wanted to be reassured, but the cauldron over the fire made her suspicious. She had never known the Sterkarms to prepare food over the hall fire. Before she could think it over any longer, or answer Windsor, Sweet Milk took her arm and pulled her toward the trapdoor in the middle of the stone floor. Men were stooping, noisily unbolting the trap and lifting it up.

She looked down through the trap into the darkness of the tower’s ground floor. The gray daylight coming in through the hall’s narrow windows, and the hall’s firelight, filtered down through the trap, and the scared, upraised faces of the 21st men could be seen, blinking and shading their eyes. A moment before, they had all been shouting and gabbling, the noise rising into the hall. The moment the trap opened, they were instantly silent. The sudden, abject quiet grated on Andrea’s nerves. The Sterkarms around her were stringing longbows or setting arrows on strings. She thought: Terrible things are going to happen, and I’m going to have to see them.

Someone nudged her. She looked up and saw Toorkild. He said, “Tell them to give in. They be our prisoners now.”

Andrea looked at the other faces standing around the trapdoor. Per wasn’t there, and she wished he were, even though he would almost certainly side with his father.

Joe was there, but he was standing among the Sterkarms as if he were one of them. She bent over the trapdoor and translated Toorkild’s words for the men below. She added, “Do as he says. They’ve got a big pot of boiling water up here. I don’t know what it’s for if not to pour on you.”

The fear on the upturned faces intensified; and then the men began to shove each other, their feet scuttering on the floor, all trying to get as close to the walls as they could, thinking they could avoid the arrows, avoid being scalded.

Bryce leaned forward a little, peering up. “Andrea. Are you all right?”

Tears came into her eyes. “I’m fine, but—”

“And my men?”

“The men who got trapped with me are all dead.”

“How?” he said.

Her tears came faster. She didn’t want to say that the Sterkarms, her friends, who had spared her, had killed them. “Give up,” she said. “Please.”

“Are they going to kill us?” Bryce asked. If it seemed they were, then he had grenades and might as well take a few Sterkarms with him.

Andrea turned to Toorkild and began to talk with him. Bryce at first tried to follow what they were saying, but it was too quick. He looked around at the men with him in the half darkness. They were pressing against the walls, each calculating how likely he was to be missed by the arrows. Few of them knew each other. They wouldn’t fight for each other.

One of the men said, “They’ve only got bows and arrows.”

“Think an arrow can’t kill you?” Bryce said.

“’Tain’t a bullet, is it?”

“Chuck a grenade up there,” someone else said. “That’ll give ’em something to think about.”

“Windsor and Miss Mitchell are up there,” Bryce said. He didn’t see the movement of the man who, without waiting for orders, reached for a grenade at his belt.

A three-foot arrow stuck out from just under his rib cage. It passed clean through him, struck the wall behind him, and, quivering, splintered inside him. Another hit him in the thigh; a third shattered against the stone floor. The man’s knees sagged with shock, and he went down to the dirty floor. The other men, staring, were rigidly still.

When they looked up, it was impossible to tell which of the longbowmen had loosed the arrows. All of them had arrows on the string again.

“Brawly done, brawly,” Toorkild said, nodding at his archers. He had warned his men of the magic the Elves might be armed with, and he was proud of the way they obeyed him. “Braw shooting.” To be quick-eyed enough to spot the movement down there in the shadows had been worth praise; but to shoot down at such close range and hit the mark so well—that was worthy of reward. “I’ll remember thee, my lad.”

“I’m sorry,” Andrea said, to the men on the ground floor. Her hands were to her face and her face was white. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Joe, just behind her, felt he’d been turned to stone. What showed of his face, through his beard, was white. He swallowed and looked about at his new family.

Bryce held up his hands and said, “Okay, okay.” He had his pistol, with its thirteen shots. But those bowmen were fast. He would be gambling that he could get his pistol out and cock it before one or more of them nailed him. Even if he succeeded, how many could he shoot and how many could they shoot? And there was the danger of hitting Windsor or Andrea, with a ricochet if not a direct shot. Maybe he was making the wrong decision again, but he didn’t have much time to think before more arrows came down.

“I told you to give up, I told you,” Andrea said. “Oh God, is he all right?”

Bryce wanted to say, Of course he isn’t, you stupid— Instead, he said, “We give up! What’s going to happen to us?”

“They’re going to ransom you,” Andrea said. “It’s what they usually do with prisoners.” She looked at Windsor, who stood on the other side of the open trap, his arms held by Sterkarms, his face pale and sick. “Toorkild wants aspirins. Boxes and boxes of them, enough to last him for years. And whiskey. But aspirins more than anything. If FUP gives him them, he’ll let you all go back through the Elf-Gate—but then the Elf-Gate must be closed and never opened again.”

“Oh certainly,” Windsor said. “Oh yes.” Dirty hands held his upper arms in bruising grips, and he was surrounded by a fug of sweat and onions. He could hear the blood thump in his ears, and the beat of his heart was shuddering through him, he hardly knew whether with anger or with fear. “Promise him anything you like. Pile cream. Corn plasters.”

“What about this man, this injured man?” Bryce called.

Andrea spoke with Toorkild again, briefly. “They’ll take care of him if you give up. They won’t hurt any of you if you give up, I can promise you that. Well, no more of you. They aren’t a cruel people.” The man on the floor of the basement below her writhed as she spoke. “I mean, they’re not sadistic.” I’m babbling, she thought. “I mean, they won’t beat you up just for kicks or anything like that. Please—give up and do just as they say. Don’t let’s have anyone else hurt, please.”

“We give in!” Windsor said. “For God’s sake, we give in!”

“What’s going to happen,” Andrea said, “is, they’re going to open the door. One or two of you will go out into the yard. They’ll disarm you. I promise you it’ll be all right if you don’t fight.” She put a hand to her head, thinking: I was telling someone else not to fight. Who?

Bryce sighed and lowered his head. Whatever was promised, there was no knowing that the Sterkarms wouldn’t murder them in ones and twos as they went out into the yard. “I’ll go first,” he said.

It was a slow business. Toorkild shouted orders from the window, and the door of the tower was opened a little. Against the light was a shaggy-haired black shape. “Kom!” Bryce raised his head, straightened his shoulders and walked out. The other 21st men hung back.

Sweet Milk, stooping over the open trap, pointed at the men nearest the door. “Ut!” The two nearest ducked out through the door, and it was slammed shut.

Bryce and the other two, out in the bright light of the yard, were surrounded by people, many of them women, who grabbed at them, shrieking, and pulled them, shoved them, dragged them off their feet into the mud. It was terrifying. Bryce’s heart pounded and his body shook. It was the sheer malice of the women that was so frightening, their twisted faces, their shrill voices, and the certainty that they saw no value in him but only in his clothes. His jacket was dragged off, revealing the grenades on his belt and the pistol in its shoulder holster. Then men moved in, shouldering the women aside. They held Bryce down in the mud and took off his belt and holster, while the women tugged off his boots.

When both his boots were off, everything went still around him. The Sterkarms had lost interest. Bryce sat up in the mud, moving slowly so he wouldn’t alarm anyone. The other 21st men were near him. Both had lost their boots and jackets. One had lost his shirt as well. Their clothing and their boots were now being bundled up in the arms of different women.

A Sterkarm man stooped over Bryce, took his arm above the elbow and dragged at him to let him know he should get up. Another man stood by with a long knife in his hand. Bryce got up.

He and the other 21st men were taken along a narrow alley, paddling through the mud and muck in their stocking feet. The turns and twists of the alleys among the crowded buildings were confusing, and when they stopped, there seemed no reason why they’d stopped at this building rather than another. They all looked much alike. A ladder led to the door in the upper story, and Bryce and his companions were made to climb it.

Other Sterkarms were waiting to receive them at the top, and they were brought into a long, dim room, smelling of wood and thatch. A trapdoor was opened in the floor, and they were made to climb down another ladder, into the building’s cold, dark, stone-built lower floor. There were no doors or windows down there. The ladder was pulled up, the trapdoor slammed down, and the bolt shot across. The darkness, except for a few cracks of light reaching them between the floorboards, was complete.

They waited a long time in the dark. Bryce felt his flesh turning to stone in the cold. He couldn’t see the others, and was ashamed to speak to them. They must be blaming him. He upbraided himself, screaming at himself inside his head. He should have ignored Windsor, should have insisted. What was the point of keeping your job 21st side if you were killed on the 16th?

The trapdoor above was opened again, the ladder lowered and three more half-naked men clambered down it. They shuffled about in the dark for a while and then found a place to sit on the floor of hard-packed earth. None of them had anything to say.

Gobby Per was in charge of the tower yard and had been considering the problem of the Elves guarding the Land Rovers. They were still unsuspecting—the uproar in the tower had been muffled by its thick stone walls. But there were ten of them, and they were armed with Elf-Pistols. Gobby had no time for pistols himself: They were cumbersome, slow and unreliable. A bowman could shoot countless arrows while a pistol was being loaded for one shot. But Little Per had said that Elf-Pistols were different, and sheep-brained though the boy too often was, he did have some sense.

Gobby sent men with bows, to be let down from the tower wall out of sight of the Elves. They made their way quietly around the tower, keeping out of sight below the hill’s ridge. Other archers went up on the tower’s wall.

A sudden shower of arrows fell on the Elves, some from above, some from the side.

It seemed the arrows came from nowhere, sudden flickers of darkness, whacking into the ground around the Elves, hitting the Land Rover, sinking deep into flesh. Some Elves were hit at once—others, not realizing they were beset with arrows, turned, looked up. Arrows hit them in the face. Down they went, without firing a shot. Others tugged at the arrows in their bodies, found they were barbed, and forgot their guns. Some fumbled at the unfamiliar weapons and couldn’t make them fire. One Elf shot two Elves beside him.

A couple of the pistols were fired, with long bursts of terrifying noise that had the Sterkarms ducking below their wall and covering their ears. Stone chips flew. When the noise stopped, the archers bobbed up again.

When it seemed that all the Elves were disabled, Gobby himself led out five men with spears, to finish them off. The archers came out of cover too, drawing knives.

One of the Elves heaved himself up, and again there was that deafening, terrible noise that set the sheep and horses running in the valley below. One of the archers went flying backward. Gobby and his men took cover behind the Elf-Cart.

The noise of the Elf-Pistol stopped. Cautiously, the Sterkarms raised their heads or peered out from behind the cart. Not all the Elves were dead, but none of them seemed to be raising Elf-Pistols. Gobby and his men went forward, kicking the pistols out of the way and spearing the men. When they saw what the pistol had done to their archer, they chopped the Elves into pieces small.

The basement emptied slowly as the day passed. The men, filing out, passed by the wounded man, who had been moaning, trying to get up, falling back and crying out for hours now. Andrea had begged Toorkild to do something for him, and Toorkild had said, “In a while,” “When we can” and, finally, “Gan where it can no be heard if tha can no stand it.”

She’d gone over to the big stone fireplace and, leaning in its corner, she cried, over so many things and for so many people, she wasn’t sure, from minute to minute, who she was crying for.

Windsor shouted, “For God’s sake, can’t you do anything for him?”

When the basement was empty except for the wounded man, the door of the hall was opened and Windsor was hustled down the steps, past the sobbing man, and out into the gray light of a damp, chill afternoon. His escort dragged him straight past the excited women—Windsor’s boots, jacket, swagger stick and watch had already been taken from him in the tower.

Now only the wounded Elf lay in the tower’s basement. Sweet Milk went down the tower stairs from the hall, drawing his dagger as he went. In the basement, a long stripe of light entered from the open door, showing the straw and dung. The wounded Elf lay in shadow, behind the door. Sweet Milk crouched over him and cut his throat.

As Sweet Milk straightened, with blood on his hands, Toorkild came down the stairs, laughing and clapping Joe on the back. Sweet Milk couldn’t laugh.

Windsor was shoved to the ladder, and shaken and prodded until he preferred to climb down it into the darkness below rather than be pushed down. As he went down, the chill of the stone building closed around him. His feet touched a damp, cold floor, and the ladder was tugged from his hands and pulled up, out of sight. The trapdoor was clapped down. The sound boomed dully between the stone walls.

Windsor stood still, listening to the blood thump in his ears and feeling the beat of his heart shudder through him. Gradually, the worst of the fear began to fade, and anger began to rise.

He saw, clearly, that nothing could be done with the 16th Project while those savages remained in possession. There was no reasoning with them. Offer them all the benefits of the twenty-first century, and because they were too ignorant to appreciate them, they flung them back in your teeth and spat in your face too.

Wipe them out, the lot of them.

I’ll kill them myself, he thought. With my own bare hands. He could do it. Any monkey could kill. Look at the monkeys that did.

Aloud, he said to the men huddled around him in the dark, “Well? How are we going to get out of here?”