Day of War Read online

  He watched the helmets of the Amalekites, likely stolen from Philistines because Amalekites never wore armor. They were looking back and forth at one another, doubtless discussing the best approach to deal with the few remaining men in the town. He loathed the Amalekites and their barbarian ways. Their cowardly warlords loved to kill children and rape women. They had been his people’s enemies from the days of the exodus from Egypt. They had become his own enemies more recently.

  Benaiah touched the boy’s body and felt the weight of loss all over again, the pain that never seemed to leave him and tore at him in the darkness.

  He made sure the dagger was in his belt and clutched his spear. It was never his favorite weapon. He wished he had brought his club, but he had left it back with the army. No good on a lion hunt, it would have served its brutal purpose well here. He laid his bow against the tree with the intent to retrieve it later.

  Just before he rose, Benaiah put down his own spear and took up the spear left by the warrior. The balance was perfect. The wooden handle had been polished smooth by unknown ages of the warrior’s grip. The head, cut from a metal he had not seen before, was honed to a sharp point.

  He felt something — warmth — permeating the weapon. The drizzle was cold and his body was shivering uncontrollably under his soaking clothes, but the shaft of the spear was as hot as a baking stone. Heat snaked through his fingertips and into his arms, and Benaiah felt it surging through his body. His muscles cramped, released. The force of it overwhelmed him.

  Benaiah allowed the strength to flow into him. He no longer felt the pain from his wounds. When he shut his eyes tight, he saw images of fire — fire that came not from the spear but from the sky above, then underneath, then everywhere at once, with the spear becoming ever hotter.

  The wind through the canopy of trees above blocked the faint sound of his movement as he stood and began to stalk toward the Amalekites’ right flank. Benaiah still had no plan. He only knew he needed to hurry; the violent force of the heat from the spear pushed him forward. And deep beneath that fire, the familiar demand roared in his heart for the blood of these enemies.

  The closer he got to the Amalekites’ flank, the more the pain from the claw marks dimmed, and the more his muscles tightened with new strength. The spear burned. The shield was off his back now and fitted onto his left forearm.

  He knelt ten paces or so away from the closest man. He could now see their faces illuminated by the distant flicker of the village’s campfires. Arrogance spilled from them.

  Crouched, body tense for battle, he looked down the slope. He saw many people moving around one of the homes — perhaps the one where they had taken the boy Haratha.

  It was not good that all of the village’s men were concentrated in one place. It gave the Amalekites an easy target. They would not have to worry about hidden reinforcements surprising them; they could circle the buildings and smoke the villagers out or force them into the open. Since all of the most able fighting men were gone, as the Amalekites’ scouts would have reported, they would only be facing the few craftsmen, farmers, and shepherds Benaiah had seen earlier.

  When the village’s men were dead, the Amalekites would sweep through the town and take all that they pleased, raping the women and slaughtering several children as a warning. Others would be taken to be sold into slavery. Many lives were about to be destroyed.

  There would be dead children. Bloody, brutalized women. Screams. Benaiah closed his eyes, tried to fight the memory …

  … a dark doorway, screams from all around him. Men of Amalek did this, men of Amalek did this, she told him, over and over. Men of Amalek did this …

  The burning threatened to overwhelm him. He embraced it. He studied the helmets in front of him as the spear raged in his grip.

  Ten soldiers.

  Ten who would enter the black depths of Sheol this night.

  FOUR

  In the house, Jairas looked away from the water and blood as it dripped down the side of the workbench on which Haratha lay. The boy’s shouts pierced the room. Jairas reinserted the leather strap into his mouth.

  The physician was probing Haratha’s wounds with a bronze pick in an ineffectual attempt to remove particles of fur and dirt buried deep in his flesh. Water was doused across the wound again, but blood kept filling up the gash and obscuring the physician’s work. The boy yelled and broke into tears — the first time Jairas had seen him do so.

  He motioned for one of the others to take his place so that he could wash his brow, since blood and sweat were beginning to obscure his own sight. Walking to a basin in the dark corner of the common room, he picked up a ladle and poured water over his face. Its coolness prickled his hot skin. He shuddered. The grime from the day’s exertions was covering his body and would take considerable scrubbing to remove.

  Although carrying Haratha back down had been exhausting, the man Benaiah certainly had had the worst of it — leading them up into the pass, hunting lions, and then attacking one in the pit.

  It was after dark when, carrying the youth over his shoulders, he had stumbled down the main road and called out for aid. The women and the few remaining men who had not been conscripted came running, and they laid the boy out on a workbench in the physician’s home. The physician—whose occupation some of the followers of the Law frowned upon, believing that it showed a lack of faith in Yahweh—was a skilled man who had served in King Saul’s army before being dismissed for stealing. He stubbornly defended his innocence of those charges at every opportunity. Most of the village people cared little about the things of Yahweh and were desperate enough for physical care that they did not mind the physician’s origins or his attitude.

  Jairas dipped the ladle into the water and poured it over his eyes again, then wiped them with a cloth.

  Haratha’s screams began to subside. Either the loss of blood or the weakness brought by fear was calming him, and he panted slightly, whimpering with delirium.

  “I can do nothing further with this, so I will dress the wound and wait,” said the physician.

  Haratha’s father, standing next to his son’s head, nodded his gratitude toward the physician. He stroked his son’s hair while his wife wept softly. The man’s left leg was missing from the knee down, an old wound from the early days of Saul’s wars with the Philistines. Jairas motioned for the rest of the crowded room to leave, then followed them outside into the night air.

  The moon broke free of another cloud and hung suspended for a moment, illuminating the village and the mountains surrounding it. Jairas looked back up the mountain and thought of the warrior and the lion. Now that Haratha was back safely, Jairas wanted to form a search party as soon as it was daylight. The brave man deserved that, at least.

  The other villagers were wandering down the street back to their homes. Jairas looked on while the watchman tended the flames of one of the lookout fires.

  Jairas had lost a friend in the attacks of the past weeks, a good man with good children. His wife would need a husband again soon, to provide for and take care of her. The dead man had no brothers for her to be married to, and as a village elder Jairas was responsible to find her a new husband. He stared into the fire and thanked Yahweh, as all men did, that he had not been made a woman. Theirs was a hard life. He turned back toward the house to check on Haratha one final time before turning in for the night.

  Noise burst from the tree line at the edge of the village. Clanking, crashing, and screaming echoed in the cold night, carried by the wind. Jairas was so startled that he caught the front of his sandal hard on a stone and fell. He leaped back up and looked in the direction of the clamor.

  Village men ran up to him. “What is it?” shouted one of them.

  “I don’t know—but grab your weapons!” Jairas sprinted past the watchman’s fire to his own dwelling, where he grabbed the sickle sword Benaiah had given to him on the lion hunt.

  His wife was shocked awake in their bed. “What? What’s happening?”
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br />   He never stopped moving. “Problems at the edge of town. Stay inside and barricade this door.”

  Jairas ran back into the night, hearing his wife calling after him but ignoring her. Joining with the other men on the road outside, they all ran toward the sound of battle.

  How many were there? Who was fighting?

  Sense finally clicked in his mind, and he halted the group of village men. There were ten of them.

  “We should not charge them wildly. Form a wedge.” “A what?” asked one of them, a tanner.

  “A wedge! Did you not serve in Saul’s army? A point of three men, with the fourth behind so that the rear is covered.”

  He pushed them into formation, making two teams of four. They carried rusted bronze hoes and spears that were nothing more than sharpened sticks — pathetic weapons, but all they were allowed to have by the Philistines.

  “You two.” He pointed at the two old men not in a team. “Follow us and pull out any wounded. Can you do that?”

  They nodded.

  “Hurry!”

  He led the first team at a steady trot toward the sound of the fight. His band of old men and farmers would not last long against trained warriors, but he would be a dog of a man if he did not try to protect his home.

  The sounds were becoming spaced out. One side had inflicted losses on the other, and now they were probably growing tired, he thought. It had been many years since Jairas had heard the sound of combat, but a man never forgot it. He was terrified.

  The moon, which had been hiding behind a cloud bank, was revealed once more. The sight before them stopped the group in midstride.

  Several bodies lay in a trail from the woods leading into the village clearing. Fights always moved downhill, Jairas remembered, the slope carrying the momentum of men in struggle. As his eyes followed the sound of battle, he recognized the animal skins and mix of captured armor the Amalekites wore. But they were trying to encircle only one man, who was moving with great speed among them.

  The man swung his spear in an arc at the level of his enemy’s heads. He ducked under a swipe from a man behind him, tucked the spear under his arm, thrust it backward, and buried it in the torso of the attacker. Before the Amalekite had even fallen to the ground, the warrior slid the shield down from his upper arm and hit another in the face with it. The man staggered back from the blow, and the warrior lowered his shoulder and drove it into his midsection.

  Screams resonated as the lone figure darted immediately to the next man, driving his spear so quickly that Jairas scarcely saw it. The warrior was moving impossibly fast.

  The moon hid again, burying the fight in darkness, but Jairas could still make out the forms in combat. He did not know who the warrior was, but he was killing Amalekites, and for that reason the villagers needed to join him.

  “Come on, left side, left side!”

  Jairas sprinted forward, motioning the men in his wedge to stay tight and cover his sides. There was an Amalekite soldier in his path, facing the skirmish with the unknown warrior and paying no attention to anything behind him.

  Jairas’s sword thrust clinked off the Amalekite’s armor. The surprised man turned, but before he could react, Jairas punched him in the mouth, hurting his hand but gaining enough time for his men to run the man through. Jairas started forward again and motioned for them to follow, but after a few steps he realized that they were not.

  “Come! He needs our help!”

  The group was looking past him.

  “No, my friend. He does not,” a older shepherd said.

  Jairas turned back to the fight. He finally realized who the warrior was.

  Fire burned in his muscles as Benaiah dove to the rocky ground to avoid a spear and rolled, not thinking, simply moving. His enemy’s sword thrust just missed his waist. He leaped up and sprinted away from the group to draw them after him, hoping one might slip and fall, providing him another opening. He had to find the sixth man.

  Reaching the tree line, he banked sharply to the left and leaped over an Amalekite warrior, then sprinted toward the village, where he could turn and face them again, this time with their forms illuminated in the glow from the fires, providing him better targets.

  Benaiah saw a band of men fifty paces away. He recognized Jairas clutching the sickle sword. On the ground next to him was the sixth Amalekite soldier.

  Jairas shouted something, and his men stepped forward holding their weapons out. The Amalekite attackers saw them and skidded to a halt.

  Benaiah slowed. “Hit them now!” he cried.

  Jairas’s men, protecting their homes and families, bayed war cries like a pack of wolves and ran toward the five remaining Amalekites. Benaiah shouted for them to stay in their wedge.

  After only two or three clashes of wood and metal, the Amalekite leader in the middle of the group waved his sword and shouted an order in their language. He and his men immediately spun and fled toward the safety of the forest.

  “Chase them! Don’t let them reach the trees!” shouted Benaiah.

  Battle rage flooded him, and he cried out, the flames hot and lashing at his muscles. He bent and grabbed a discarded lance from the ground without breaking his stride and threw it in one motion. It whistled through the air and buried itself between the shoulders of the Amalekite leader.

  The fire was consuming him now, making his legs shake with power as he ran, and he grabbed the impaled shaft sticking out of the still-standing man and shoved it forward through the Amalekite as hard as he could. The lance head lurched through the man’s rib cage and burst out the other side. As the man fell forward, Benaiah seized the lance head and pulled it as he passed, sliding it entirely through the Amalekite’s body and out the other side.

  Benaiah threw the lance again and struck another man. He repeated the motion, driving the weapon into his enemy’s body and pulling it all the way through the dying man as he passed. He did it again with a third.

  As he ran past the place where he had planted his spear earlier, he snatched it up, holding it in his right hand and his shield in his left. Still running and very close to the edge of the clearing, he closed on the remaining two men. Their heavy armor slowed them, and he laughed at their stupidity for wearing it on a raid.

  The first man looked back at him, terrified, and begged for mercy. Benaiah clipped the back of the man’s leg with the spearhead, causing him to pitch forward onto the rocky ground. He leaped over the man’s body and closed on the last Amalekite.

  Just as the man reached the trees, Benaiah felt the fiery power suddenly leave. Weariness overcame him, the grip in the spear handle went cold, and the wounds on his head and shoulder raged with pain once more.

  He threw the spear in a final effort to stop the Amalekite. It arced through the air and landed in the dirt — a mistimed throw. His enemy cursed him over his shoulder as he disappeared into the forest.

  Benaiah shouted in frustration and slowed to a stop. Sweat dripped from his face, the heat from his body giving off steam in the frigid air. After catching his breath, he turned and walked to where the wounded Amalekite with the crippled leg thrashed in agony. The man cursed him in the tongue of his people.

  Benaiah could speak the Amalekite tongue, having spent time among them. “Answer my questions,” he said. He put his sandal on the Amalekite’s throat. “Where did you come from and how many are at your camp?”

  The Amalekite glared at him. “How did you get those weapons?” he asked. “Your people have no smiths or—”

  Benaiah pressed hard on the man’s throat. “Where did you come from?”

  The man gagged. Benaiah looked at the man’s injured leg. The hamstring had been cut. Crippled for life, at least, but it didn’t matter — Benaiah had no intention of letting him live.

  “If you tell me where your encampment is then I will show you mercy.” He eased the pressure on the man’s throat so he could speak.

  The man reached back and felt his leg, fingering the smooth edge of flesh where Be
naiah’s spear had cut him.

  “Tell me where your army is and what you are doing far away from Amalekite lands.”

  The man clutched his leg, wincing in pain. Blood covered his hand and formed a small pool near the wound.

  Benaiah pressed harder on his throat. “If you tell me, I will show you mercy. This is the last time I ask.”

  The Amalekite spat out something inaudible. Benaiah released some of the pressure.

  “There’s a larger raiding army moving up from the desert through the plains,” the Amalekite choked out. “We were ordered to break off and steal food from any villages in the mountains we came across. We didn’t think it was defended. All the Israelite fighting men were supposed to be with Saul, fighting against the Philistines.”

  “Where are your spies? Who are they?”

  “I don’t know such things. I obey my masters.”

  Benaiah cursed, knowing the man was right. A regular foot soldier would not know who was feeding the chieftains information. Benaiah thought of the city of Ziklag, where the families of most of David’s men lived. An army of Amalekites raiding the south? Even after what David’s men had done to them this year?

  “How do I know you’re not lying? It is common among your kind.”

  The Amalekite’s replies were becoming weaker. “All of us mustered after those raids by the Lion of Judah. I knew many that he killed.”

  “How many of you are there?” “I don’t know. Many.”

  It could be true. Most commanders of large raiding parties kept them divided up to prevent total defeat if things went badly. It was easier to move a group of twenty men than it was a thousand. So the total number of fighters might be unknown to those lower on the chain of command.

  Benaiah lifted his foot off the man’s throat. This was troubling news. With the Philistines on campaign against Saul, and with David joining them, there was no one to watch the southern border for raids. The incursions by David’s army had been so successful that entire Amalekite clans had been wiped out. No one had thought they would be able to muster an army after such devastation.