I Shall Avenge!
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Twelve minutes to eight…
God, no! It was eleven minutes to eight. The clock hand had just moved.
Legionnaire Kriso Tovak made a wild calculation. He established that he had about six hundred seconds to live. A cigarette would last longer than that. So, if a man were to light a cigarette now—at this very moment—it would still be burning when he, Tovak, was dead.
Tovak whimpered. He pressed his terrified face still harder against the bars of his cell window. And he continued to stare at the big clock that brooded over the opposite side of the barracks.
Then he remembered that the clock always struck the hour. Just one reluctant, mournful stroke. Clong… Like that. Men new to Dini Sadazi often waited for it to go on chiming. But it never did. It was too old and it did not care. It had been there since the barracks were built and it had looked down on too much suffering.
So now that clock seemed to say: “There—another hour has gone. But if you want to know which hour, you must look at me. I can’t be bothered to talk…”