The hideout of the Sanchirian Wolves was located among the foundations of a tower built on top of the badlands of an isolated cliff, far from all the villages in the area. The entrance was a cave masterfully hidden at the base of the badlands by a cloud of thorny bushes. Anker found out that the entry procedure was peculiarly convoluted.

  The driver of the carriage hopped off from his seat and moved the brambles - they were not real plants - and then got back to his place to ride the cab into the cave. Beside the entrance there was an anteroom where a discoidal boulder, in perfect continuity with the wall, hid a secret passage. At this point, Frank went to the boulder and knocked it with a very precise pattern. Once the correct sequence was reproduced, the boulder was rolled away to allow the visitors to pass into an immense and bare room carved into the rock. Here the driver led the carriage to a large underground stable.

  Outside the stable there was a second gate where Frank had to correctly complete a secret phrase. Here the members of the group were identified one by one. The guards at that post told Frank he and Anker would have to talk to Clesbius as soon as he finished his meeting with the other high-ups of the organization. Meanwhile they could wait for him at the lounge of the base.

  After the identification process the group was taken to a dark passage so narrow they had to pass in single file. They thus reached an interminable wooden spiral staircase, which led up to the rooms that had been built between the foundations of the tower. The rooms were arranged on two levels and extended over a considerable area. From the center of the second level it was possible to climb into the tower, where the command of the Sanchirian Wolves was located.

  The tower, once a lookout post, seemed completely abandoned: passing the rickety entrance an unknowing visitor would find himself in a windowless, almost circular hall, where the beams, columns and wooden mezzanine had fallen. The tapestries were tattered, the crumbling stone stairs led nowhere. High up, with the aid of a torch, the visitor could see a precarious hexagonal ogival vault. In reality, the diameter of the inner circumference was a couple of yards shorter than the outer one and hid a false bottom. Through this recess, via an uncomfortable ladder, it was possible to reach the most secret rooms of the lair, in the upper part of the tower, where the commanders hatched their plots and guarded their resources, including the stolen Exoplions.

  Of course, during his visit, Anker was only informed of what was deemed strictly necessary for a new member of the organization. However, the small mechanical cockroach that emerged from his pocket could take liberties that he was not allowed, and begin a meticulous work of exploring the structure and transmitting the data collected through Anker's speculum, which acted as a relay to the specula of his collaborators, passing completely unnoticed.

  “Ugh, you have a cockroach on your leg!” Nika shouted to Anker, who had just emerged from the spiral staircase into the vestibule of the first level of the lair.

  Anker shook his pants vigorously, knocking the insect to the ground. The bug scurried away, shunning the light of the lanterns. “That thing was big!” Anker exclaimed with genuine disgust, “Should I expect to find a monster like that under the blankets of your dormitory, if I decide to join your ranks?”

  One could read on Nika's face that she had a joke about monsters under the blankets on the tip of her tongue, but Frank preceded her by saying, “It's strange that such an insect is roaming freely around our supplies. I will notify the appropriate person for pest control.”

  As they proceeded from the entrance to the common room, Frank said to Anker in a host-like manner, “Come Artolt, while we wait for Clesbius to finish his strategic meeting, I will introduce you to the others.”

  “So…” Frank continued, “At the moment, the Sanchirian Wolves are forty-seven strong. Here at the headquarters there are thirty-two members of the organization, because some are deployed in the territory and others are on missions. Some of us, less than a dozen, have already received a Symbjorm, but the majority has not yet. Let's say that with the shipment you have brought us, we will be able to advance our plans faster than expected.”

  “The grafting procedure is trivial, but then it takes years of study to master just a handful of spells. What do you do with all these Symbjorms?”

  “Oh, we don't have time for that, as you can imagine. But we've found a better solution,” Frank said with a sly look, “Some fallen knights do not return their Exoplions to the Order. They are isolated individuals, no one would bother to come to their rescue. They are easy prey. All you have to do is follow them closely for a while and take advantage of the first moment of distraction they have. We have already managed to recover about twenty Exoplions from them.”

  “I see what you’re up to. By using the spells already recorded on the Exoplions you don't need to learn them from scratch,” Anker observed, simulating a vague amazement.

  “Exactly,” Frank said smugly, as he opened the wooden plank door of the hall.

  The dimly lit room had an empty central space, on which was laid a round crimson carpet with ocher patterns, and all around were arranged worn sofas and low tables. On the opposite side from where they had entered there was a counter with a beer tap and a shelf full of liqueurs: Anker deduced that the members could serve themselves freely because there was no bartender but almost everyone present had a glass or mug in their hand.

  The anarchists chatted shyly, divided into three groups, some in front of a newspaper article, some smoking a cigar or pipe, some playing “briscola” with a deck of Gregherian cards. An unhealthy haze of smoke hung in the air. Overall, there were thirteen people in the room, including Anker, Frank and Nika. Frank headed towards the largest group, consisting of a woman in her thirties, an older man and two guys about Frank's age.

  “While I introduce Artolt to the others, how about you go get our guest whatever he likes and a mug of beer for me, Nika?” Frank asked his sister cordially.

  “I say you move your ass and get it yourself, you dickhead. I can introduce Artolt myself,” Nika replied, giving him the finger.

  One of the two guys, clean-cut and with glasses on his nose, who at a first glance didn’t have the looks of a rebel at all, said to calm the spirits, “I'll go. It's still half an hour before lunch is ready: I have plenty of time to get to know the newcomer you’ve brought us, Frank.”

  “Thanks Urchie dear, you can fetch me a glass of white cherry liqueur wine,” Nika said with a wink.

  “Instead I'd like a bitter. If you have it, Tarterno mentholated with ice,” Anker added.

  “Of course, if there's one thing we never run out of around here, it's alcohol.”

  “Urchibond, you're making her head swell,” Frank disapproved. Nika blew raspberries at him.

  “It's useless for you to be so gallant, Urchibond. She's made it clear to you in every way that she's not interested in you,” said the other boy, a tousled redhead.

  “Don't listen to them Urchie! Work hard, because nothing is impossible, and you never know in life!” Nika exclaimed, as if she wasn't the one being talked about.

  “Ah, what jerks you are!” Urchibond laughed out loud, as he walked away towards the counter.

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  Anker sat down between Nika and Frank, on the only free sofa of the three that surrounded the coffee table around which the group had gathered. The space was cramped for three people, and if Nika's soft thigh and right shoulder pressing on his left limbs were making him aroused, Frank's bony shin on the other side discouraged him from elaborating impure thoughts, and overall Anker simply felt overwhelmed.

  The other woman, Miltriba, also had a certain charm. Like Nika, Mill must have had a nice character, but she was more reserved and not as provocative. Mill worked in the forge and workshop of the base with a couple of other conscripts, and at the moment she was the only one of the three on a break from work.

  Urchibond was part of the medical staff of the infirmary, while Follyhox, the carot-top, was one of the few lucky ones who, like Frank and Nika, had received a Symbjorm. Unlike the two of them, however, he was a hothead who was only good for brawling.

  He recounted, without abstaining from the use of colorful expressions, how a couple of days earlier his squad had messed up a couple of recruits from the Order of Ferlonia who were trying to retrieve an Exoplion from a band of brigands in the Morchigian mountains. Thanks to a tip-off they had received from command, they knew about the knights' mission, so they waited for them to clean up the camp and then slaughtered them, riddling them with arrows, javelins, and stabs. They left them barely breathing, letting them die like the filthy dogs they were.

  Frank cynically observed that Anker must have shared a lot with those two knights: if they were recruits, they must have been from his same class at the academy, and therefore they must have studied together. Anker, as a response, shrugged and said that at the academy he had only met shitty people, so whoever those two were, it couldn't be a big loss for humanity.

  Despite his bravado, Anker began to feel a certain pang of fear: in that lair there must also have been the sorcerer who had been involved in the assault on the horn of Morghorou, and it could only be a matter of time before he was caught red-handed in the enemy's lair.

  Anker tried to investigate the matter of witchcraft by slipping the subject out naturally and indifferently.

  First, he inquired about the ideals of the Sanchirian Wolves, then about their religious beliefs. As he suspected, five of the six interlocutors professed to be atheists, except for the elderly gentleman who defined himself as “not a practicing one”.

  So Anker made a joke, saying that after all, the Zephyrian religion was not bad, compared to the paganism of the ancients. At least there was a positive morality, and no one would ever dream of making human sacrifices or other abominations of the kind.

  No one defended the False Gods and the arcane rituals, citing the empirical fact of their certain efficacy as Viryl had done. The answers focused on the fact that there is no need for the judgment of a God to act in solidarity with one's brothers, so, in their view, even the Zephyrian religion was to be considered outdated.

  So either Viryl had been mistaken, or the bait that Anker had thrown had not been enough to make them bite.

  That vein of conversation was exhausted, so Anker thought to shift his attention to the old man, who was the only one of the group who had hardly spoken a word and seemed even more of an outsider than he himself felt. However, before he could ask him any questions, a guy dressed as a cook popped out of a small door next to the counter, announcing that lunch was ready.

  Everyone must have had a certain appetite, including the anarchists sitting at the other tables, because no one lingered: everyone stood up and moved towards the refectory with a certain trepidation.

  *****

  Five hours later Anker, Frank, Nika and Follyhox were still sitting at a table in the refectory, playing “tressette”. Nika had insisted on teaming up with Anker, and they were doing great. This was mainly because Follyhox was bad: every now and then he would play cards without being sure that Frank could take them, and then he lost his marbles when Frank asked him to play more carefully.

  The meal had been, to use a euphemism, forgettable. A mush of ground meat, potatoes and beans, served with a side of boiled rapini that had been cooked for too long.

  After lunch, the first to leave was Miltriba, who had to go back to the forge. Then Urchibond had returned to the infirmary. The last to leave, an hour earlier, had been the old man: he had received a message on his speculum and had said, “Oh no, I've been called back for an unexpected operation. Let Clesbius know that I'll send Vodlum with new information shortly.”

  Follyhox had stayed to keep them company because he was on rest until the next mission.

  In the end, the old man had slipped out of Anker's mind, and he had left without even introducing himself, even though they had spent several hours together. Anker tried to remedy this by asking Frank who the guy was.

  Frank’s answer was cryptic, “Remember when I told you that we have a few aces up our sleeve to deal with the Order? Well, one is the Exoplions. The other is gentlemen like Rucent, Vodlum and others. We are not alone in this battle.”

  He didn't say anything else.

  Anker was left only with the possibility of speculation. Who was Rucent? A corrupt official or knight? A spy for Gregheria or Fortenbrit? A financier of the League of Free Communes? One of the sorcerers that Viryl feared so much? He didn't seem to have a particular accent, he spoke perfect Ferlonian. Every possibility seemed as plausible as the others.

  That question, for now, would go unanswered.

  In the middle of yet another game of tressette, two guards with short swords hanging at their sides entered the refectory. One of them said, “Clesbius is finished and is waiting for you, Frank. He has been told everything. Bring your new acquaintance to his office on the second level.”

  Anker's stomach sank. He immediately sensed that his introduction to Clesbius would not be a walk in the park. The head of a subversive organization capable of worrying the Order had to be an extremely circumspect and shrewd man. If he wanted to get away with it, he couldn't afford to make the slightest mistake.

  Nika and Follyhox also got up to follow them, but the guards waved them off. Evidently, the leader only wanted to meet with Frank and Anker.

  The journey was quite distressing for Anker. Frank led the way through the labyrinthine corridors of the base, and the two guards followed them without saying a word. The atmosphere had changed dramatically. From lively and carefree it had become serious and uncompromising.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Frank opened a door and let Anker through. In the center of the office was a desk, and sitting at it was an imposing man dressed in a black ethereal armor with grooves and bright purple trim. On the surface of the desk were two pistols of the same materials and colors, and between them a pile of printed dossiers. Clesbius was using one of the stolen Exoplions.

  On the other side of the table there was a single chair, and Frank had stepped aside into a corner, so Anker realized that that place must be for him. He sat down and the two guards stepped forward to stand on either side of him.

  “I have been told that you have four symbjorms with you,” Clesbius began.

  Anker did not answer, but pulled a pouch from his belt and placed it on the desk. From it emerged, writhing, the head of a black worm.

  Clesbius, with his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, interlaced his fingers. He thought for a few seconds, then said, “How much do you want?”

  “Three hundred silver ducats each, negotiable.”

  “Consider the price you ask paid. However, there is a more important matter to discuss, Artolt of Fontebruna.”

  Unexplainably, a shiver ran down Anker's spine. Clesbius began to patiently leaf through one of the files on his desk. After another pause, the anarchist leader said, “You see, this is a reproduction of last year's yearbook of the Golden Fox Academy of Tarterno. And below are the profiles of the knights accoladed in the month of Caducicus, at the end of this academic year. Comparing the two documents, it shows that there were two Rejected this year, but neither of them is named 'Artolt of Fontebruna'.”

  Clesbius paused again, tapping the gloved fingers of his left hand on the table, while with his right he continued to leaf through the file. Anker was pale. What madman could have ever given such confidential documents to the insurgents? Clesbius calmly resumed his speech, “However, taking a look at the profiles of the recruits of the knights of the Royal Order of Ferlonia... let's see... I'd say you look a lot like this one here. Anker from Colleluna di Valbaudia, the Black Moon.”

  Without warning, the two guards raised the blades of their swords to Anker's neck. They were not a problem, a force shield on contact with the skin would suffice. But one wrong move, and Clesbius would blow his brains out with one of his two pistols, assuming he had fast enough hands. Anker would rather not find out.

  Frank did not lose his composure in front of his leader, but, totally bewildered, he could not help but say, “Artolt, tell me there is an explanation!”

  “The explanation is that you got screwed, Frankleon,” Clesbius scolded him, disenchanted, and then continued, “Let's see, Anker of the Black Moon... excels in the construction of automata and is skilled in medium and long range combat. He has poor athletic abilities and knows four special spells, including 'Compression-Decompression Impulse' and 'Corrosion', which are the ones he uses most often in combat. He is intelligent and often comes up with original ideas. About his personality… he is defined as one of the knights of his class with the highest sense of justice and honor, but he is also arrogant, stubborn and impulsive... and that’s all about him. Stay on his neck, boys.”