Covenant of War (11 page)

They were too late.

Benaiah stared, frustrated, through the leaves of the bush he was hiding in. He spat. Keth punched him lightly on the arm.

“We will get around it. Keep thinking.”

Keth and his annoyingly calm demeanor. Benaiah nodded.

The Philistines were already in the valley. They had encamped at the mouth of the Elah, and there were advance troops meandering up the pass toward the Hebrew village of Adullam, having crossed in a place not visible from the mountain lookout Benaiah and Keth had just come down from. Another group was picking its way along a ridge that would eventually lead to the place where they currently stood. Which might mean that they had a commander who had experience fighting in the mountains.

Benaiah still did not understand why they kept invading the same valley, but this time, with Israel completely unprepared, it made sense. Normally the Philistine corps used the trade roads along the dry summer riverbeds and meandered into the hill country like a
great bloated ox, lazily and rudely crowding the small farming villages and outposts that lined the route to Jebus and the rest of the interior tribal lands. This was where the suffering of the Hebrews was most acute. There were rapes and thefts and endless killings. With this he was well acquainted.

Keth pointed. “There’s a screening company moving along that ridge.”

Benaiah saw it. The invasion was still marked by arrogance, however, with the forcing of so many quickly assembled men into the same route they had always used.

“I hope this ends like the last time they sent so many men into the Elah.”

“I would love to have been there for it. A sling against their champion,” Keth said.

“But there are too many of them now. We won’t be able to stop them.”

The Philistines could not have been more different than the ragged-looking Israelite warriors in their layers of shawls and robes and head wraps covering a simple cloth battle tunic. Only a few Hebrew soldiers were fortunate enough to have any type of armor. The Philistines wore thickly stitched battle kilts covered in small iron plates that resembled fish scales.

A layer of iron plating covered their chest and back, flesh exposed bare under their arms and belly. They had helmets designed according to lot and rank, with the same basic design: metal and leather straps lined with colorful beads and iron scales, with a bushy plume of horsehair bristling at attention. Senior leaders had tall, well-hewn horsehair plumes, while more junior soldiers had mere tufts fixed onto the leather head wrap.

They worshipped the gods of the sea, and their appearance resembled horse warriors from the deep, with matching armor and weapons. Ox carts drew wagons with individual champions, laden
with the idols that were always brought along to protect the massive warrior who would emerge from among the ranks to challenge opposing armies.

The champions rode in the carts to conserve their strength; lesser men were left with the monotony of marching. The Philistines had giants as their champions, enormous soldiers from Gath who stood two or three cubits taller than normal men. Only one had ever been beaten by a Hebrew in single combat. Benaiah hoped to change that if it became necessary.

Lance bearers rode in the narrow chariots near the champions’ ox carts, alert and ready for any threats to the flanks, able to throw the lance with deadly accuracy up to twenty stadia away.

Archers, with their lighter armor made only of leather for better arm mobility, tramped along near the foot soldier companies they supported. They had huge chests and were the broadest and arguably the strongest soldiers in the army. The Philistines used the long recurve bow, a weapon notoriously difficult to draw, requiring much strength and many hours of conditioning. But Benaiah also knew that archers were the easiest to frighten on a battlefield since they were unaccustomed to fighting up close, preferring to launch arrows from far away and drink wine that night and brag about their fearsomeness.

Heavy-weapons soldiers trudged along in the middle. Their ranks were usually full of the criminals and outcasts of the kingdom because they were the first to die and did not need to be smart, but from their ranks occasionally came the most terrifyingly brave warriors.

And they all had water. Satchels and satchels full of it. Benaiah tired to ignore this.

“They still bring chariots into the passes. I will never understand it,” said Keth.

“These kings must not have fought Abner face-to-face and are too arrogant to listen to their commanders.”

“Should we go around?”

Benaiah studied the foot soldiers prodding their way through the ravines. They were keeping out of the bottom and staying on the ridgeline, a smart decision.

But something occurred to him as he watched. At its narrowest point, the column of troops would have to cross a series of fallen trees likely felled by a bad spring storm years ago. The game trail they were following was not wide enough to hold the column marching several men abreast. The tree trunks lay vertically down the mountainside, providing a rare clearing in the dense undergrowth.

The forest canopy was a dozen cubits above a man’s head. One could see the area from above, where Benaiah and Keth were crouched, but at eye level, there were only leaves and tangled branches, impenetrable.

“We could hit them there and escape in the confusion,” Benaiah whispered.

“That’s a risk. They could wound us. Why not just go around?”

“We need to delay them.”

Benaiah sketched his plan into the dirt. Keth eyed it warily, but nodded. “How long should we hold?”

“As soon as they rally for counterattack, we will disappear. We’ll hit them right before their archers go through. They won’t want to shoot their own men by accident.”

Benaiah took several breaths, realizing all of a sudden how exhausted he was. Climbing mountain after mountain, swinging heavy blades, drawing and stringing tension-filled bowstrings, endless running and crawling, the unwelcome presence of a fresh arrow wound. He saw weariness on Keth’s face as well.

“Your wound is still okay?” Keth asked.

“Fine.”

Keth nodded. “It would be good to stall them a bit. Are you certain you want to go in, and not me?”

“Your bow shot is more accurate than mine. I trust your aim.”

Benaiah plucked his short sickle sword out of his belt and let his shield slide down his arm into his grip. Keth unwound the bowstring from a stick he carried and began to fit the line into the notch. He pulled hard, and the other end of the line popped back into place, the bow staff now bent with tension. The constant shifting and changing of weapons made each man wish for a moment that they had brought armor bearers along.

But only for a moment.

Ittai was immensely satisfied that his chosen company was conducting itself with such discipline. He had been right; there were good men among the regulars.

His orders were to slip unnoticed along these watershed canyons leading out of the hills to scout ahead and screen the movements of the main force into the valley that the Hebrews called Elah.

Ittai was alert. The lookout team had not signaled, and there was as yet no sign of them returning. He moved to the front of his column. He held his curved scimitar ready in his hand, sheathing it only when he had to cross a stand of fallen trees. The ground reeked of ambush when he approached it, but as it was the only way to the ridgeline that he desired to be moving along, he did not want to waste the time going around it. They needed to probe deep into Hebrew lands by nightfall.

Normally this ravine would have been blocked by rushing water, but there was terrible drought in these hills, evidence of which
emerged as he noticed how dusty the game trails were and how crisp the once-green forest had become. The bushes were thick and still overgrown, but leaves and grass had become brittle. Twigs snapped loudly and unavoidably as they marched. Ittai wondered if perhaps the Hebrew god was angry at his people or their king and was withholding rain from them. Dagon did not do such things; the plains always had water, meat, and wine aplenty.

After leaping over the fallen trees, Ittai positioned himself at the other end and ensured that several warriors were securing both entrances to the clearing. Despite the treacherous ground, none of his senses alerted him to an ambush. He was prepared to keep pressing along the forest trail and ascend the ridgeline when he felt something warm and wet spray him.

He startled violently as his armor bearer slammed against his waist, a broad-head arrow nearly severing the soldier’s head. Red mist drenched Ittai as he ducked to avoid more arrows.

He looked down at the gruesome expression of terror on the dying man’s face. The armor bearer’s eyes were fixed, his head hanging only by bone, a long arrow shaft in the ground nearby. Pushing the body aside, Ittai dove to the ground under the last fallen log in the clearing, yelling for everyone to find cover.

Troops paused on the trail to his left and stared at him blankly. His ears rang with tension and his own yelling. Then the soldiers saw the blood and the corpse and dropped to the ground. The men crossing the trees in the clearing stopped, paralyzed with fear, having seen their officer die gruesomely in a torrent of his own blood.

Ittai yelled at them to get down, to tell the others in the trees to get down and be ready to counterattack, but they only stared at him. He cursed their lack of discipline. They were not veterans of battle. They had not seen the terrible wrath of the war gods when they descended upon man.

But then the ringing abated. There was no sound of warriors screaming in bloodlust, the sights and noise of an ambush, and Ittai lifted his head higher to see what had caused —

The two soldiers crossing the trees died as fast and as violently as the first, arrows piercing one’s chest and the other’s neck. They gagged and fell off the fallen tree trunks, disappearing into the undergrowth. There had to be a force of multiple archers assailing them. The arrows were coming too quickly for just one man to fire them.

And then he saw a warrior, a large man, leap out of the bushes near the far entrance of the clearing and impale the gasping soldier watching the carnage. The Philistine next to that man received a stab in the torso between the armor plates, a perfect strike, a strike too perfect to have been delivered by a regular man.

Ittai clutched the amulet of Dagon around his neck, staying low to avoid arrows.

Keth had only five arrows left, but the Philistines didn’t know that. He would keep the left side pinned while Benaiah assaulted the right.

A head emerged on the left side over a log. Keth was not normally an archer; he preferred to use the metal blades that his people had forged for generations, but he could shoot an arrow as well as the other Giborrim. He aimed at the head.

Ittai chanced a look across the clearing to see what was happening. It was only a glance, and then he would lower —

The arrow rang against his helmet with such velocity that it stunned him. His vision went dark, he felt like he was swimming, swimming in a vast lake of blood, and he was dragging his men by the collar of their armor, but he was sinking. He was reaching …

Keth cursed at himself for missing the soldier’s neck, reminding himself to compensate for the downward slope in his aim.
Draw until it touches the mouth
. He fixed another into the notch.

Benaiah narrowly avoided the pike thrust aimed at his chest. He slapped it away, using the shaft as an avenue to stab through to the shoulders of the man in front of him.

He had killed four and wanted six more. Anger came over him, the darkness rose again and snarled in his spirit.

Two more emerged from the path, and Benaiah waited for the first thrust, which he parried. He swiped his sword at the first man but missed. He yelled and swung again, and though his blow was blocked, it was all the Philistine facing him had courage for. The soldier turned and ran, stumbling into the two immediately behind him.

The other Philistine had chosen to rush into the bushes up the slope directly toward Keth. But Benaiah had time only to shout a warning up the hill before he aimed the tip of his sword at the base of the spine he saw in front of him and shoved in deep.

That man shook in a death tremor and vomited directly into the face of the soldier he had bumped into while fleeing. That Philistine, in turn, shrieked with fear but died immediately when Benaiah stabbed him in the throat.

Benaiah’s sword caught up in a bush before he could kill the final soldier in the group. He could only smack him with the shield he held in his other hand.

There were more charging up the trail.

Ittai emerged from the lake of blood and the fog and saw the forest, parched and dry, and thought of water. He fumbled for his pouch, trying to ignore the ache in his head, then shouted a curse for wasting so much time.

Groggy, he rolled over, head throbbing. He had to risk it — he lifted his head over the log again, but this time there was no arrow waiting for him, only the sight of the large Hebrew warrior in the path across the clearing killing his men.

“Attack him!” he bellowed. “Assault through it!”

His order shook the dozen or so around him into immediate movement. He directed them into the brush up the hill to attack their attackers, attack anything they saw — do
anything
so long as they did not remain on this trail.

And Ittai knew what he must do in order to lead his men. He charged up the slope, lowered his head, and smashed into the warrior. The Hebrew, looking down the path away from him, did not see him coming. Ittai threw his shoulder into the warrior’s waist, knocking him off the path and into a bush. The Hebrew flipped from his belly, yelled, and immediately punched Ittai’s face.

Ittai kept his head lowered and absorbed the blows, waiting for his opening. When the warrior’s fists slowed, Ittai hooked his knee under the man’s ribs and tried to pin him farther into the bush while the rest of Ittai’s troops caught up, but the warrior felt the movement and Ittai wrenched away in pain as something struck his face.

The club came down again and again, striking him across the shoulder and against the plume of his helmet. It would have killed him had he not managed to pull away from the staggeringly powerful blows.

The warrior crawled back out of the bush. Ittai did not wait for him to get to his feet but ran at him again, muscles burning. He saw the black war club raised in defense and swung his scimitar wildly, trying to kill the man quickly.

It was a mistake. The Hebrew had only been feinting a defense, and now Ittai’s jaw went numb as the club struck him under the ear. Warm blood sprayed into his mouth. The blow was shocking — he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t catch his breath at all.

He lifted his weapon to block another strike, but none came.

The Hebrew was escaping.

Keth was running down the trunk of a fallen tree, its branches long since rotted away and providing him a clear path to the ravine on the other side. He had heard Benaiah’s warning about an escaping Philistine, but glancing left and right, he had not yet seen him.

A branch snapped close by, and he dove instinctively.

A Philistine had been lying in wait for him. The man swung his sword too eagerly, tangling it in the brush. Keth scrambled back on hands and knees, not wanting to give the Philistine another shot. The Philistine yelled, frustrated that his ambush had failed. Keth withdrew a flint dagger from his belt as he crawled and waited for the Philistine to swing again.

Keth jumped over the flashing blade and landed just behind the man as he turned. The flint dagger sank to the hilt in the man’s neck. The Philistine slumped forward, and his head struck the boulder, leaving a smear of blood and vomit.

Keth did not pause. He checked over his weapons and gear quickly and then darted back onto the fallen tree. He halted in the center of the clearing of fallen trees, taking position at the exact place where he had killed the first two Philistines attempting to
cross. He drew once more and sent another arrow into the narrow game trail opening where he saw figures emerging, but did not pause longer to see what happened, looking instead at where Benaiah had killed the troops on the other side. Archers were finally appearing on the trail. They were escaping just in time.

Keth ran as fast as he could, hoping that Benaiah had broken through and was going to meet him down the ridge at the designated rally point.