Covenant of War (10 page)

Eleazar’s mind clouded, and he felt it coming, the sense of darkness and despair, as if the sunlight itself were being swallowed. He remembered the tent and its dark opening, the smell of perfumes and fine oils. The women knew how to prepare their bodies to
please men. This one had been captured in the north, the Ammonites said, where skin was pale and eyes the color of honey. She was waiting for him inside. The night breeze was cool across his face; warmth flowed from the tent. It would never be known, never be seen …

Eleazar blinked. He was breathing hard. Sweat crowned his forehead. He pulled his shawl over his eyes and dabbed the cloth against his skin. He could not bring his eyes to stare at the figure again, but he felt it standing there, condemning him. Depression, the worst he’d ever felt, came as it only came when he remembered that afternoon at Gibeon and the following night at the Ammonite tents.

The cloth of his shawl was thin enough to see through. He could see the house and the inner courtyard and the accumulation of all that made him happy in this life, stricken with the gray night of his heart as he watched it.

Cover me in the day of war, God of Abraham
.

Suddenly, he heard screaming and shouting inside. There was crashing. But where other men might rush forward to find out what was wrong, Eleazar knew the sound well enough. Like spring rain, he felt his soul revived. The night withdrew, the sun shone, and he knew that the figure was gone.

He felt the quivering in his jaw that came before tears. He whispered thanks.

He unwrapped the shawl covering his head to see a small boy emerge from the doorway into the entryway of the house with a long wooden stick. The boy took careful aim and launched his weapon into the yard. It flew true, and Eleazar had to duck to his left to avoid being hit by it. Right behind him was a little girl, her head wrapped in a pale gray shawl, elbowing her way past him into the yard.

“Father, Jacob has been throwing that spear at us all day!”

“It’s not a spear, it’s a javelin. You don’t throw spears if you can help it,” the boy retorted.

Eleazar looked down at his daughter. “If I was outnumbered seven to one by women, I would start throwing javelins too.”

Jacob retrieved the javelin and held it up menacingly to his sister. Eleazar turned his head aside to avoid letting them see him laugh.

They darted back through the entrance screaming at each other. The street was quiet once more. Eleazar saw small heads bobbing across the rooftop, another group of his children playing one of their games. The occasional rock was tossed over the side, the occasional shout and laugh. The sound of a frustrated woman yelling.

They were good sounds. Clean sounds. The sounds of hope. The sounds that kept away the storm.

A woman appeared in the doorway as the two children raced past. She had a delicate face with a short nose, kind features, and the sort of beauty that lingered with men even if it did not stop them in their paces. Eleazar gazed at her.

She smiled with a curious expression. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Just looking at you,” he answered.

“Well come in and look at your food. And tell your son to stop throwing spears at the girls.”

“Javelins. You don’t normally throw spears.”

“The only spear that you should be concerned with is your own. We don’t have enough sons, and I am not getting any younger.”

She gave him a mischievous smile and disappeared back into the house. The sounds of his family playing continued unabated. Girls squealing, his son bellowing his war cry.

Eleazar knelt down behind the wall of his yard so that he could not be seen. He let himself take several deep breaths.

He lifted his head and glanced around the alley. No one.

He raised his hands in that quiet place and looked at the heavens,
holding very still. He listened to the sounds. Undeserved mercy was in them. He thanked Him of the Mountains for sending the sounds when he needed them and asked for the covering to come whenever the storm came again.

Benaiah dropped out of the tree. Keth reached out and steadied him as he tottered on a loose stone.

“You need to see it. Don’t go above the second branch because they have scouts in the woods.”

Keth leaped and caught hold of the lowest branch of the oak tree and swung his feet sideways to brace himself as he climbed. He reached the second branch.

They were in the forest near the top of a mountain. From where he perched on the branch, he had a clear view of the vast western slope of the central hill country all the way to the Great Sea. In the valley below were several thousand Philistine troops gathered near the pass of Elah, leading up to the passageways that bisected all of Israel. They had been encamped only a short while, because none of the usual traveling merchants and prostitutes that followed armies on campaign were present. He was still too far away to get an accurate count, but as he squinted against the late afternoon sun,
he knew that there were too many. Far too many for their fledgling new army of bickering tribes.

He spotted the scouts Benaiah had mentioned — a squad of five soldiers making its way through the trees toward his position. Which made sense — this was the best vantage point for miles, and they would want to be able to scout the valleys to the left that led deep into the hill country to see if any of the small farming villages were crowded with Israelite troops.

It was the same invasion route that had been used through the generations; it had been the site of countless skirmishes, precisely because it was the most strategically important place in the land. Keth had sat through many councils over the past several years about what to do if the Philistines were to make such an invasion when David came to power. And here it was. Precisely when they least needed it.

He saw an advance column preparing to march into the Elah pass. He and Benaiah were going to have to hurry if they were to cross the valley before the Philistines swarmed it and blocked their way to Adullam.

He dropped down next to Benaiah.

“We will need to be fast,” Benaiah said, picking up his equipment.

“What about the scouting team?”

“Kill them. When the Philistine commander finds out his troops were killed on a simple reconnaissance, he will assume there are a lot of us waiting for him and proceed more cautiously, giving us time to rally the army.”

“I agree,” said Keth. “Your wound is good? Ready to fight again?”

But Benaiah was disappearing into the woods, and Keth ducked low under the branches to keep up with him. They darted in and out of crevices and notches covered with bramble along the side of the hill. After a few moments, they crawled on their bellies until they could peer over the edge of a rocky outcropping below the summit of the mountain where they had just been.

Below them, about twenty paces away, the Philistine squad had paused for a water break. The leader had the sense to order them to keep their position secure, and each man was sitting behind a rock or tree in the shadows of the canopy, but the arduous climb had made them thirsty and they were lazily failing to keep watch.

Keth waited for Benaiah to give the hand signals that would direct their attack. Benaiah was studying their position. He crawled another few paces until he was near the trail they had taken themselves. He gestured to Keth.

“When they file out of the trees and see this path, they will come one at a time. I will take them out and you can cover me. Remember to let one of them escape.”

Keth nodded. It was better to let one escape and spread rumors of Hebrew demons among the ranks of the enemy. The two of them clasped arms and spoke a blessing to each other, their ritual.

Then they waited for the Philistines to finish their water break. It was very hot, even in the shade, and Keth’s thoughts became drowsy and erratic. He and Benaiah had been traveling for a week and had not rested since their morning battle at the tent. Their water was limited; no streams flowed in the land and every well was bitter.

He began to daydream as he waited, staring vacantly at a flat stone that glinted in the sunlight. He saw Benaiah shift, stirring up dust, which shimmered and rose a handbreadth from the earth. Keth felt extremely tired, and thirsty, and was eager to be able to move freely again. He never cared much for the work of the infantry, slogging through the forest. He was an armorer, a fighter of single combat, and the one who assisted Benaiah, his friend. Those were his missions.

He loved his new wife as well. She was younger and more beautiful, by far, than any other woman in the city. Her hand had been hotly contested, and her father had protested marrying her to a
foreigner, but David and the others had deferred to Keth when they saw his fervor for her. He had also paid an enormous dowry, and that had quieted her father’s objections.

Footfalls on the trail nearby roused him. His senses prickled, alert and ready. He clenched the bow.

Keth blinked, focused, frustrated that his mind kept wandering.

A leg appeared around the rock, and Benaiah waited for the soldier to round the corner before he thrust his dagger into the man’s throat and slashed with a single vicious cut. The cut was so deep that the Philistine could not make a sound. Benaiah pulled him down and waited for the next man, who rounded the corner not long after his partner and received a similar slash across the throat.

But this man was able to yelp before he died.

Benaiah jumped out from behind the outcropping, Keth following him. The other four men froze when they saw them, and Benaiah yelled his war cry and charged, swinging the club. The Philistines looked unable to move out of fright, as though they saw a demon.

Benaiah clubbed the first man across the face without stopping, then rammed the blade of the sword that suddenly appeared in his shield hand into the belly of the next one. Keth shot an arrow at the next man, but he had seen it coming and dove into the undergrowth. The last man, bringing up the rear of the squad, ran screaming down the mountain.

Keth shot another arrow into the brush where the soldier had jumped. Benaiah dove into the brush, and Keth heard a dull thump as Benaiah’s club found flesh, but the man cursed aloud in his tongue and managed to crawl out of the brush onto the open trail, his face partially caved in from Benaiah’s club.

Keth shot an arrow and struck the Philistine’s neck. The man clawed at it, snapping the shaft in half and opening the wound, sending gouts of blood pouring over his chest, which terrified him even more.

Benaiah clubbed his head again, finally killing him.

“Tough,” Benaiah panted.

Keth nodded. “More like that one and they won’t need such a large army.”

“How is your water?”

“With their supply we should be fine until we reach the cave.”

“If there’s none there, then we’ll have to go into Adullam. There’s a Philistine garrison there, but a small one.”

Without another word they slipped into the woods, hoping to beat the Philistine army into the Valley of Elah.

Ittai had noticed the ravines to the left of the pass as soon as he arrived at the encampment. A smart king would lead his troops through unfamiliar terrain by using those ravines, he thought. Instead of prancing about in the open for all to see and count, the Philistine army should be sneaking its advance parties into the hill country through those hidden routes. Hebrews might be expecting them there, but at least they would have a harder time guessing their numbers. Once they were certain no army waited for them in the woods, then they could march the remainder into the valley. But they were led by fools, overconfident in their numbers and previous success.

He swept his eyes across the tops of the ridges that lined the ravines and thought about how he would be moving his elite troops across them if he were commanding. Not in the bottom of the cut, where Hebrews could throw stones down on their heads or barrage them with arrows, but along the ridge itself, hidden in the branches, disguised by the brush and gnarled stumps that were so thick.

Thinking about what he
could
be doing made him anxious to reunite with his company.

They were called the Sword of Dagon. Ittai had overseen their selection and training during the previous years. The elite Sword of Dagon had a purpose: the Philistine kings could send them out against other nations and win the field with few losses. Best company against best company, much like how champion fought champion for control of nations. The king of Gaza had once arranged a combat between the Sword and the elite company of Egypt, the Red Nile. The Sword had crushed them, and as a reward received their women as slaves.

“I’m ready to get back to the Sword,” Ittai said, for what may have been the fifth time that week.

“Me too. Do you think they will match with the Thirty?” his armor bearer asked.

“If they exist. There’s probably more than thirty of them anyway. Probably just a name to scare young troops.”

“I overhear the men talk about David’s Thirty. They’re terrified.”

“More than you hear them talk about the Sword?”

The armor bearer nodded. “Why are you surprised? You’ve kept quiet about them.”

“Politics in Gath and Gaza. Kings needing to be wet nursed. When I’m back with them, we’ll make our name among our own men.”

“They’ve heard about it, of course. Only one hundred, the best of our warriors. Named for our chief god so he would fight with them against the Hebrew god. But they’ve heard more about David’s Thirty, and even more about their god.”

The Hebrew god was a concern, Ittai thought. Worse was the possibility that there were other friendly gods in Canaanite country giving support to David when they saw that the Hebrew god favored him.

Ittai was eager to put the Sword into battle against Hebrews. If the Sword could destroy the Thirty in combat, should such a unit
exist, it would paralyze the Israelites with fear and put the country into a terrible uproar of panic and flight. As frustrating as Philistine political maneuvering could be, it was nothing compared to the tribal bickering and warring that occurred in Israelite country. David was now the king of the most fractured nation in the world.

“Have you heard how it has been for them hiding in Bethlehem?” the armor bearer asked.

“Got a dispatch last week. They’re tired of pretending to be regulars along with the rest of the garrison. They’ve loved defiling the Hebrew king’s home village, but they’re eager to meet up with us in the valley to push south. We need to isolate Jebus, pass through Bethlehem, and then hit Hebron before David can muster an army. But our kings want Jebus to be taken first,” Ittai said.

“But the fortress in Jebus will take weeks to conquer, if not months. And that will give David time to come for us.”

“I carry out orders, and so do you.”

Ittai tried to take solace in the sheer numbers of their force. Hebrews would not likely assault so many troops in the open. In another day he would be back with his beloved company, and they would finally be released to accomplish the tasks they were created for.

A messenger appeared next to them. “The king wants you to lead a unit up those ravines ahead of us to cover our flanks. The scouting party has not signaled from the hilltop. Might be a Hebrew force waiting for us.”

Ittai squinted at the boy in the sunlight. The youth lowered his face and gave the required salutation. Ittai shook his head. Courtesy infractions were tolerated in the Sword, but these lowly regulars needed to watch their tone around him. But the news was good, so he quickly forgot it.

“I am moving men into place,” he replied curtly. The boy ran away.

Ittai glanced at the section leader assigned to him, who then
nodded and darted ahead to organize a group to travel through the woods. This order was a rare decision of common sense and battle awareness, and it gave Ittai a flicker of hope.

Perhaps the kings were going to treat their generals less arrogantly after all.