Covenant of War (8 page)

David glared at Josheb, and Josheb glared back at him. David had only to say the word and Josheb would be put to death for this affront. Eleazar waited for another outburst.

But none came.

Instead, David’s features softened. He rubbed his eyes and sat back down on his rug. He reclined, then curled into a position a child might take if they had been scolded by a parent.

That response shocked Eleazar. Josheb’s face registered the same response. He cleared his throat. “Lord, I want —”

“You are right, of course.” David’s voice was muffled by the pillow his head rested on.

“But I had no right to bring up Jonathan. I know how that hurt you. Forgive me.”

Eleazar waited. The room was silent. Outside the door he could hear the continued murmur of the other members of the war council as they discussed their politics and alliances and interests, all bringing ambition to the table, all focused on something other than the kingdom’s best interests. All bringing a request to the king, or a complaint, all wanting power and position. And though they all heard this, there was nothing but silence in the room.

Keth eased his head up just enough to see down the canyon and count the Philistine force approaching. The morning skirmish had left him and Benaiah wary and watchful, and as they crossed a second ridge of the desert hills after fleeing the tent village of the tribal warlord, the first company of Philistine troops emerged from hiding a short distance from the trade road and pursued them.

This confirmed to Keth that they had not expected only two men to come on such an envoy. Their commander would not have prepared a counterattack for a failed ambush if he was facing only two men. Instead, he’d have assumed that the ambush squad in the tent would be sufficient.

Clearly, he had not expected David’s Giborrim.

Keth counted the squads, organized by tens as the Philistines occasionally preferred. There were eighty men in the company moving up a small draw — away from Benaiah and Keth. The false trail he and Benaiah had lain was working; either the Philistine commander was new to this type of warfare or he was unskilled as a tracker and had not supplemented his force with men who were.

Keth sat back down. It was probable that the Philistine commander would eventually return and slaughter the Hebrews remaining in the village. There was nothing he and Benaiah could do about it. Keth held his breath for a few seconds, then exhaled deeply to calm his nerves. Next to him, Benaiah was rubbing dust onto the handles of his weapons for grip.

“Where should we go?” he whispered.

Benaiah replied, “Hebron. We have to get back and warn David. This country is probably covered with Philistines. If the Levite garrisons have been as neglected as our spies reported last month, Philistia could slip thousands of troops into the Rephaim or Jezreel valleys without being contested. The northern kingdom would be cut off from Judah.”

“Levites are supposed to be priests, not garrison commanders.”

“That’s why I tell people I am of Judah.”

“David has not been crowned more than a fortnight. How could they muster so quickly?”

“A spy in the court could have tipped them off that it was coming weeks ago. Maybe even among the Thirty. That last Philistine
we killed knew much about what’s been happening at court, and about our level of military readiness. Josheb and the others have been suspecting a spy.”

“Joab or Abishai?” Keth asked.

“Possible, but unlikely. Joab schemes to stay in David’s favor, and Abishai would never support treason. The real problem is that we have no idea how organized the northern armies are anymore. We have all of this new territory but are not prepared to defend it.”

“Then I think we need to assume that war has already broken out and go straight to the caves. David may already be there. How else can he stop the Philistines from invading Judah?”

“He won’t mobilize until he knows what he is facing.”

Keth heard Benaiah sigh, likely frustrated anew that David kept sending him away for these missions. Why even have a bodyguard?

Finished with his weapons, Benaiah wrapped them back up in the leather and tied it around his shoulders securely. The exertions of the previous hour had left the grips slick with sweat, and Keth knew how paranoid Benaiah was about a slick grip. It had been thus since the time he had slain a man-eating lion in an old hunter’s pit trap. Benaiah had told him that the handle of the spear he was using was so slick from the blood and sweat of their fight that he was unable to hold the weapon firmly.

Keth looked at the jagged flesh at the edge of Benaiah’s dark hair, briefly wondering what it would have been like in the pit with a monster like that. He shook his head. “We should go to the caves,” he said, patiently prodding Benaiah.

“He might remain at Hebron,” answered Benaiah.

“He will need to defend the passes. We can’t let Philistia isolate us from the north.”

“You go to the passes or the caves or wherever you feel is best. I am going straight back to Hebron,” Benaiah snapped.

Keth lowered his eyes. “I know your wife is in Hebron, but that
is not Ziklag. Brave men guard the city. Trust them. The caves are between us and Hebron. If David and his army are not there, we can continue to the city.”

Benaiah inhaled sharply, then apparently thought better of lashing out at his friend again. Keth knew that after several disasters while Benaiah was away, including a long-ago raid where Amalekites killed his daughters and raped his wife, Benaiah would not leave her alone when there was a threat.

“Is she well?” Keth ventured.

Benaiah shrugged his shoulders and nodded.

“Your sons?”

Benaiah nodded again. “They looked a lot more like her than me before we left.”

“Praise Yahweh for that.”

Benaiah looked away to hide his grin. “Hopefully they still do. I am worried that they will look like me. No woman will take them.”

“Eleazar mentioned that he wanted to betroth two of his daughters to them,” Keth said as he shifted his back against the rock. He held out a piece of dried goat meat, which Benaiah took and promptly bit off a piece.

“Good. Maybe then I will get the money he owes me.”

“I think we should go to the caves first, brother, and then return to Hebron from there if nothing is happening. It is not too far out of the way. But I am with you in whatever you decide.”

Benaiah leaned over and looked down the valley. It was clear of Philistines at last. “There are far too many soldiers out here just to assassinate tribal leaders. I think troops are converging from the Philistine outposts.”

“To where?” asked Keth.

“If they are invading, it will be Pas Dammim, in the Elah Valley.”

“Decide, my friend. We are going to run out of water soon. None of the streams are flowing, and we don’t have time to dig.”

Benaiah nodded. Keth watched him scratch his head thoughtfully.

Then he was up and moving. “The caves,” he said, and Keth followed him.

David rolled over and faced the three of them again. He fumbled with a fig in the bowl and tossed it into his mouth. Eleazar saw such age and weariness in his countenance that he thought once more how remarkable it was that David was only thirty years old. Each man present and nearly all of the senior commanders of his army were at least seven years older than him.

“What else?” he continued.

It was as though the confrontation had never happened. Eleazar glanced at Josheb, who seemed content. At least the necessary words had been spoken. Whether they were heeded was between the king and Yahweh.

“Your men in the towns of Judah are setting about preparing their own units for the next campaign season,” Josheb answered, extending a peace offering to his king, which David accepted with a gentle nod of his head.

The
gedud
, some of David’s old outlaw companions, had been placed throughout the land of Judah as the administrators and landowners of sizeable populations. This rewarded them for their service and was also a clever way for David to protect his interests, since they would be battling over the fate of their homes if an invasion ever took place. The lands of Judah had become a mixing bowl of different nations and tribes who had been aligned under the service of David; the actual tribe of Judah was proud of their native son but wary about the influence of so many foreigners as their leaders.

“The drought is destroying all the crops in the land. Only a handful of towns where the wells have not dried up yet have clean
drinking water. Philistine garrisons are everywhere in the north and have taken over many of those wells,” Shammah said.

“Has it really become that bad?”

“The worst I have ever seen. The water that does run is bitter and foul. It would poison any man or cow who drank from it. Yahweh has cursed the land.”

Shammah was not given to exaggeration, so if he said it was bad, Eleazar knew it was dire.

“The farmers?”

“Unable to irrigate. No streams are flowing. The Philistines …” Shammah hesitated. “The Philistines have reinforced their garrison at Bethlehem.”

At the mention of his hometown, David closed his eyes. It was a while before he spoke again.

“How long have Benaiah and Keth been gone?”

“Over a week,” said Josheb. “They don’t know about Abner. Benaiah won’t take the news well. Especially since it was Joab.”

“I pray they can convince the
apiru
leaders to join us. We need them. Warlords are more trustworthy than those scoundrels,” David said, gesturing with his head toward the hallway, where the tribal elders and leaders from the north were still talking.

“What do you plan on doing about Joab and Abishai? The northerners won’t fight under them,” Eleazar asked, only a little hesitant to bring it up again.

“I am working on that. Give me time.”

“Killing Abner was inexcusable. Joab should be executed,” Eleazar said plainly.

“I told you — he is too powerful now. I can’t just kill him. Too many men of Judah are loyal to him. There are many powerful commanders who approved of what Joab did. Tribal fighting. Yahweh forgive us, it will be our undoing.”

“We still need to do something about them,” Josheb said.

“There will be an opportunity.”

David paced, thinking. The other three waited.

“The new army will be composed of two corps. One corps will be drawn from the people, north and south. We will set it up as Eleazar has recommended. The other corps will have the mercenaries and the Giborrim. I will think about what to do with Joab and Abishai. Go get your midday meal.”

The Three left the chamber.

On the edge of the Israelite hill country, a Philistine named Ittai was daydreaming.

In his dream he saw a dark sky and a darker ocean, with waves that roared around his head like a predator chasing prey. The waves grew higher and higher, and he was clinging to something, a stray piece of wood perhaps, but it kept sliding out of his grasp before turning into a serpent. He swam as hard as he could, pulling his hands frantically through the growing waves, trying to outswim the serpent and the monster that lurked beneath the waves — the monster his father had warned him of, the one who would pursue him always.

And then the daydream ended the same way his dreams at night ended, with the waves fading to blackness; a long quiet, the cool of the dark, and then he would awaken.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he watched the large, solid clouds billowing upward over the Great Sea and wondered if the drought over the land of the Israelites was finally going to
break. If it did, it would make their task of moving an army into the mountains that much more difficult.

Ittai made his way to the edge of the camp, nodding at a couple of guards who snapped their feet together as he walked past. When he came to the clearing where they kept prisoners, he saw two Hebrew women lying on their backs with their ankles and wrists fastened to stakes. Their garments had been torn apart and their bodies exposed. Blood pooled beneath them. It was obvious that a number of soldiers had been taking turns with them.

“How many went through before it was stopped?” he asked the nearest guard.

“A dozen or so, lord. These aren’t lasting as long as the others.”

Ittai nodded. The only way to prevent men from abandoning an attack on a town in order to rape captives was to get it out of the way early. Depending on how long these two stayed alive, most of a regiment could take their turn and be satiated. After every platoon of soldiers had raped them, the women were given a rest so that they didn’t pass out from shock or, worse, die. Then they’d have to find more, and he had other things to worry about.

They looked at him now. Empty expressions. All tears had been cried.

Ittai was nearly thirty-five and had strong, broad shoulders from years of drawing the long bow. His beard was short and neatly trimmed, an indication of his willingness to adopt the methods of other nations when it came to keeping himself fit for war. He wore a full set of armor custom forged to his body by the best smith in the land. His eyes searched the surrounding countryside constantly. His only physical flaw was the fragment of his ear that had been removed by a poorly aimed Ammonite war axe.

He was standing at the entrance of the valley the Hebrews referred to as
Elah
, a wide field leading into the hill country, traversed by a trade road following a dry creek bed. The army encamped here was
vast. Not the largest force he had seen, but much larger than the typical hastily mustered gathering of battalions that usually preceded invasions into Hebrew lands. The garrisons at the seaports had been notified. Regional kings were sending what they could in the way of military support with promises of even more once it had been proven that the Hebrew vassal David was trying to break his yoke.

Ittai hated rumors, especially when they came from his commanders. The troops knew nothing; they were here because they were paid well and would be able to use that money on whores and wine when they returned home. Their loyalty to Philistine kings was bought.

They did, however, hate the Hebrews. They hated them as only men who had been instructed from an early age could hate. For generations, Ittai’s people had been told the stories of the filthy Hebrew tribes and their warlike god Yahweh who destroyed his enemies. There was a firm belief among many that this god was simply a magic trick. The Hebrews were known to have sorcerers, old men who carried staffs and wore tattered garments, wandering the countryside proclaiming curses and warnings. There were legends of great champions who ripped apart creatures with their bare hands and killed his countrymen by the thousand with devious tricks. Dagon, he knew, was a pure god, one who commanded strict obedience and was ruthless with his enemies, not content to let his deeds be done by old wizards.

Ittai had joined the Philistine forces when he came of age following his swim in the Great Sea. The swim was required of all youths who aspired to command troops one day. They were dropped far away from shore in the tossing, vicious waves of a storm and told not to come back to land until the sun rose and set a complete cycle.

He was only fifteen years old when he was tested, but he remembered it now as he watched the thunderheads over the western
horizon gathering. The lightning had relentlessly shattered the air around him, causing his scalp to flood with heat as the storm gods threw their worst at him. He swallowed more of the grimy dark sea than he could fathom and wretched repeatedly, slipping beneath the surface countless times, only to sense Dagon and his scaly hide shoving him back to the surface. More than once Ittai was convinced that he saw the bearded face of the half-man, half-fish monster he worshiped staring at him from the deep.

The storm had calmed the following morning, but then the thirst came. Salt filled his eyelids and nostrils; his mouth burned with the desire to take deep gulps of the water all around him. But he remembered what his father had told him during preparations. The sea was foul — it was to be tamed, not drunk. “The body dies after drinking the sea!” his father had warned him the evening before.

Ittai had lasted all that day and into the evening, barely clinging to life. When the signal fires on the beach were lit that indicated it was all right to return to land, he lacked the simple strength to pull his body through the waves to land. After a few dizzy attempts at swimming, he rolled to his back and passed into oblivion.

There was the cold shadow of the sea, and he occasionally felt movement, and then arms were pulling on his hair and shoulders. A violent heave came from his gut as he wretched the last of the sea water and opened his eyes. There were blurry faces, shouts, the smell of blood. A goat had been brought to the beach and sacrificed in his honor. The more he came to, he recognized his mother and father in the crowd, and his brothers.

Of the twenty young men in his town selected for the swim, five had returned alive. Accomplishing this most sacred of feats gave him a profound sense of awe that Dagon had chosen him from beneath the waves, pushing him toward the surface whenever he was drowning, rescuing him to one day be a conqueror in his name.

Ittai was grateful for the chance to conquer in the name of
his god. His father and mother were proud of him, were prouder still when he made the rank of chariot platoon commander much younger than most due to his extraordinary skill. He distinguished himself in action against the enemies from the north who would attempt to seize valuable crop and herding lands.

He ascended through the ranks fast. His heroism at the battle of the Brook of Egypt against the better-trained and better-equipped Egyptian charioteers and bowmen, with their devastatingly effective recurve bows, made him famous. When all others were running under the withering assault of the chariots, Ittai snuck behind the lines and captured the Egyptian commander’s chariot, then sawed through his throat and mounted the head on a pike, which he waved to his men to rally them. It had worked. The Egyptians retreated back across the brook. Ittai was given three days with the temple prostitutes for this feat. In the steam and mist of the lodges of Dagon’s temple at Gaza, he had been pleasured by these women, the snarling face of his god leering from the wall and commending him for his bravery.

His first battle with Israelites had come at the place called Gilboa. Despite his inbred dislike for the Hebrews and his tendency to ignore the more ludicrous superstitions of his people about the Hebrew god, he was wary. Word reached him that the defecting Hebrew warlord, David, would be joining them on the campaign, and Ittai was one of the most prominent of the voices calling for this madness to stop.

David and his mercenary army were highly feared by the veterans who had met them on past occasions. Ittai knew of a commander who had lost his entire company when David had butchered them and cut off their foreskins, an act that sent those brave warriors into the afterlife without the ability to seed women, a horrendous insult. If David were to turn against them in the fray, it would be disastrous.

In the end, David was sent away, and Ittai believed along with the rest of the assembled army that he would go back to being the private force of King Achish, gathering riches into the king’s storehouse for a commission.

Personal glory on the Gilboa slopes eluded Ittai, for at the time, he was a chariot commander, and chariots were quickly rendered useless on the steep slopes where the Hebrews gathered. He waited out the battle on the valley floor, watching the lines of his countrymen advance up the mountain until they finally chased the Israelites to the gentle slope that allowed the Philistine chariots to attack them. But Ittai’s chariot had broken an axle, and he had watched in humiliation as other commanders stole his glory.

The Hebrews had been crushed at Gilboa, their best commanders killed or frightened off, David banished to the southern wastelands, and the celebrations and sacrifices went on for days. Ittai took part in a sacrifice on the third day after the battle. Several priests from the temple of Dagon, wearing shimmering fishlike scales on their colorful robes and head wraps, had slit the throat of a young Hebrew girl over a rock. As she gagged, priests pried open her mouth and studied the signs. Blood drained out of her throat when she coughed. The priests took turns studying the pattern of the blood on her neck, arguing with each other about the meaning of the pattern. Ittai had watched the girl struggle weakly before her lifeless body was thrown to the waiting soldiers who lustfully tore into her.

Declaring the god’s favor, the priests gave their blessing for the invasion, and celebrations were delayed until the northern part of the Israelite kingdom had been captured. They went from village to village, enslaving and destroying, stealing everything valuable and burning the livestock and crops dear to the residents of the nearby towns. On the fifth day, the priests sacrificed another girl, but this time the omen frightened them, and they ordered an immediate
withdrawal back to the plains. And so the army had left the mysterious mountains of the Hebrews, and Ittai’s first campaign against them drew to a close.

But Ittai never forgot what he had seen on that campaign. The Hebrews were proud, defiant, and would not submit to any foreign master without a vicious fight. Even with all of their army dead or missing, they believed they would eventually be saved. When salvation did not come, they met death stoically, even the children. It had bothered him. He had thought about it for months and then years afterward.

Ittai turned away from the Hebrew women and made his way back to his tent. He saw his armor bearer, a grizzled veteran who had been with him for years. Most armor bearers were younger, but Ittai loved the man’s companionship.

“Tell me, old man. Let me hear your thoughts.”

“May Ashtoreth hide her skirts from our kings.”

“That’s what I assumed you would say. But it doesn’t help me.”

“Chariots into the valleys. Ridiculous. You would think we’d learned nothing from previous invasions here. It’s a good thing that the Hebrews are holed up with their king in Hebron.”

Ittai nodded, then looked back up the pass. “We’ll be at Jebus, cutting them off from their northern lands, before the end of the week.”