Among the Gods (Chronicles of the Kings Book #5)

by Austin, Lynn

  She brushed away her tears. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “What’s wrong, then?”

  “I … I’m just so sorry that I had to hurt Hadad.”

  “I know. I am, too.” He folded his arms across his chest awkwardly, as if he didn’t know what else to do with them. She had expected him to embrace her, but he hesitated. They were both silent for a moment. Dinah could hear the distant strains of music from the wedding feast and the swish of palm branches against the window shutters.

  “I’ve been thinking about both of our fathers all day,” Amariah said. “Your father raised me after mine died. I loved him and Abba both.” He leaned against the door and sighed. “Joshua is convinced that this is what they would have wanted—that it’s what they would have expected us to do. But I’m still not sure. I never wanted to be king, you know. I still don’t.”

  “Then why did you agree to marry me?”

  “Joshua said it was what you wanted, and I … I wanted to make it up to you, somehow … for what Manasseh did to you.”

  “What your brother did wasn’t your fault. There wasn’t anything you could have done.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true, because I didn’t even try.” He unfolded his arms, gesturing fervently as if his hands could convey his feelings better than mere words. She noticed that he had graceful, artistic hands with long, slender fingers. “I should have done something to stop Manasseh from killing your father and Rabbi Isaiah. They didn’t even get a fair trial. And when Manasseh started worshiping all those idols, I should have known where it would all lead. I should have tried to save your son. I’m sorry.” He folded his arms again as if in defeat, tucking his hands out of sight.

  “I blame myself, not you,” she said, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

  “I want to make it up to you, Dinah … and so if I can give you another child, an heir to David’s throne like your first son, then that’s what I want to do.”

  His unselfishness touched her. But in spite of the bond of guilt they shared, in spite of the matching wounds Manasseh had inflicted on each of them, she didn’t love Amariah. She doubted if she ever would. Dinah was barely twenty years old, Amariah twenty-one. They might be married to each other for a long time. The thought of all those empty years stretching ahead of them exhausted her.

  Every moment she had spent with Hadad had seemed charged with energy and excitement, making Dinah feel breathless and alive. She smiled, remembering his broad, handsome face and dazzling smile. He was her savior, strong and vigorous yet surprisingly tender. An angel, she had told him, sent by God to rescue her.

  “It’s still not too late,” Amariah said softly. “Our marriage isn’t official … until we …”

  But Dinah knew that it was too late. Hadad was gone. She needed to focus instead on Manasseh—on her need for revenge. She took a step closer to Amariah. “We’re doing the right thing,” she said. “Neither of us was able to stop Manasseh. Now we’re finally fighting back.”

  Amariah nodded and carefully drew her into his arms. His embrace felt formal and unnatural. She remembered how comfortable she had felt in Hadad’s brawny arms, held against his broad, solid chest.

  Finally Amariah bent to kiss her. Dinah glimpsed the deep sorrow in his eyes before he closed them and wondered if it mirrored her own.

  3

  JOSHUA PACED RESTLESSLY IN THE COURTYARD of the military outpost, waiting for the recruits to assemble for their training in hand-to-hand combat. He seemed to spend far too much of his time in limbo—waiting for Amariah to reach a decision, waiting for these young men to solidify into a fighting force, waiting for God’s signal that the day of His revenge against King Manasseh had finally arrived.

  “Come on, let’s go! Take your places!” he shouted. The recruits moved lethargically in the morning heat. It was well before noon, but the sun already felt hot on Joshua’s back, the desert breeze moving across his bare arms and legs like warm water.

  A few weeks ago it had been Hadad’s job to instruct these men, but after he’d disappeared, the task had fallen to Joshua. He felt no satisfaction in the knowledge that the men looked up to him or had named their regiment in his honor. He wasn’t as patient with them as Hadad had been, and the setbacks they’d experienced after the change in leadership frustrated him. He gazed at the row of straw practice dummies in front of him and saw that someone had sketched an ox on one of the dummies’ tunics, over the place where the heart would be. He glanced at the gate one last time, wishing that Hadad would miraculously appear and take over this job, yet he feared the terrible consequences if he did return.

  Joshua straightened his shoulders and faced the assembled men. It seemed a lifetime ago that he and Manasseh had trained together like this, and he recalled how much he had hated his own military training. He removed his dagger from its sheath and repeated the words his instructors had once taught him. “Your point of entry is below your enemy’s rib cage, left-hand side. Put all your weight behind the knife, not just your arm muscles.” The straw crunched as Joshua plunged his knife into the dummy to demonstrate. “Stab in, then twist up to pierce—”

  Without warning, the terror-filled eyes of the young guard Joshua had stabbed to death reappeared in his mind. A shudder rocked through him. He released the knife as if it had just emerged from a forge, and stared at his hand as if expecting to see blood. The young soldiers watching him grew utterly still.

  He cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded strangled when he spoke. “You twist up to … to pierce your enemy’s heart.” He gazed into the distance above their heads, afraid to look at them, afraid to see that they were the same age as the guard he had killed. The boy wouldn’t have died if Joshua had remembered to disarm him. Joshua struggled against narrowing air passages to draw a breath. The air wheezed through his lungs when he spoke.

  “Have any of you ever killed a man?” he asked, still gazing past them. “No, of course you haven’t…. It’s not—” Joshua shuddered again as he relived the moment that the second guard ran his sword through Maki’s body. “It’s … it’s not …”

  He closed his eyes. It was his fault that Maki had died. Joshua had blundered out of the house too soon. He had no memory of killing the second guard in retaliation, but he would never forget what the man’s body had looked like after he’d hacked him to death. “God forgive me,” he murmured. He felt the silent scrutiny of his men. He was their hero, the leader who had orchestrated their deliverance from Judah. His present behavior must appear strange to them. He cleared his throat again.

  “Killing a man isn’t the same as stabbing a sack of straw,” he said at last. “For one thing, there will be blood—more than you can imagine. And it’s warm…. It never occurred to me that blood would be so warm….”

  He had to get a hold of himself, get on with the exercises. He shook his head. “But when you’re in combat, you will either kill or be killed. You’ll do what you need to do.” He yanked his knife from the straw and slipped it into the sheath at his belt, angry with himself for sounding so apologetic. “Go ahead, start practicing.”

  Joshua stood back, still shaken, and watched the recruits attack the straw dummies. The familiar sounds transported him to Jerusalem, and for a moment he was training with General Benjamin again in the courtyard outside the palace. He recalled Manasseh’s steely concentration as he attacked the straw figures, the gleam of zeal in his eyes.

  “Whose face do you see on that straw man that makes you so eager to kill him?” Joshua had once asked him. Manasseh had glared at him without answering.

  Joshua had grimly endured his own military training, always eager to return to his academic studies. But Manasseh had reveled in their combat sessions, quickly surpassing Joshua in skill and speed. If they were to fight hand-to-hand now, if Joshua’s rage overpowered him again, he wondered which of them would win.

  “Joshua … Excuse me, Joshua?”

  He returned to the present with a jolt, surprised to s
ee one of the city scribes standing in front of him. How long had the man been waiting?

  “I’m sorry. Did you need me for something?” Joshua asked.

  “The city elders want to speak with you right away. Can you come?”

  Joshua placed one of the older recruits in charge of the exercises and followed the scribe to the square where the elders met to dispense justice. It wasn’t unusual for them to call for Joshua, often sending for him when they were unable to reach a decision. But as he approached he was surprised to see Miriam’s ten-year-old brother, Nathan, standing in the center of the group. A guard held the boy’s thin arms pinned behind his back, but Nathan’s chin was raised in stubborn contempt.

  “What’s going on?” Joshua asked.

  “We’re sorry to disturb you,” the chief elder said, “but you’re the boy’s legal guardian, aren’t you?”

  “Yes…. Is there a problem?”

  “I’m afraid so. One of the vendors in the marketplace caught him stealing. He ran off with about twenty shekels of silver.”

  White-hot anger rushed through Joshua. He grabbed Nathan’s bony shoulders and shook him slightly. “Is this true, Nathan?” Nathan stared defiantly at Joshua without answering. “I asked you a question. Answer me!”

  Nathan’s eyes narrowed with cool disdain. “Make me.”

  Joshua raised his hand to slap him, then stopped himself in time. Nathan’s disrespect was shameful, but Joshua didn’t want to make things worse by losing his temper. Then another thought occurred to him. “Why aren’t you in school, studying with the rabbi?”

  When Nathan gave a snort of contempt and spat on the ground, it took every ounce of restraint Joshua had to keep from striking him. He turned, instead, to one of the elders.

  “Please tell Nathan the punishment for stealing.”

  “It’s fifteen lashes.”

  “Fifteen lashes, Nathan. Are you going to answer my questions, or shall I assume by your silence that you’re guilty and let the elders flog you?”

  The boy folded his arms across his chest and raised his chin to stare Joshua in the face. “Why don’t you flog me yourself?”

  At that moment, Joshua was angry enough to do it. Nathan was humiliating him, challenging his authority in front of the city elders. Joshua was the second-ranking official of this island community; how would it look if he couldn’t control a skinny ten-year-old boy? His jaw clenched in anger.

  “Is there proof of his guilt?” he asked the elders.

  “Yes, there were several witnesses.”

  “Did the vendor get his silver back?”

  The chief elder held up a leather pouch. “It was all here when they caught the boy.”

  “Then if you’ll agree to release him into my custody, I’ll see that he is properly punished.”

  “That’s fine with us, my lord.” The elders seemed relieved that they wouldn’t have to deal with Nathan. Joshua grabbed the boy by the back of his tunic and hauled him away. He wanted to take him someplace where no one could overhear them—and where Nathan’s disrespect couldn’t further humiliate him. He marched Nathan to the pits outside the village where the laborers mixed mud and straw to make bricks. It was approaching the hottest hour of the day, and the area was deserted as the workers took their break. Joshua pushed Nathan down on a bale of straw and stood over him, his hands on his hips.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Nathan said nothing.

  “You’d better start talking or—”

  “Or what?” When Nathan lifted his chin with a sneer of defiance, Joshua slapped him, unable to tolerate any more of the boy’s contempt. Nathan grinned. “It takes a big, tough man to hit a defenseless kid, doesn’t it?”

  Joshua stared at the red mark he had made on Nathan’s cheek and battled to keep his rage under control. For some reason, Nathan seemed to want him to lose his temper.

  “You deserve a lot more than a slap,” Joshua said. “You owe me for what you did today. You owe me an explanation and an apology.”

  Nathan sprang to his feet. “I don’t owe you anything!”

  Joshua pushed him down again. “You were nothing but a worthless thief when I took you in, and in spite of all the breaks you’ve been given, it seems that you’re still a worthless thief. I fed you, tried to educate you, made you part of my family—and look how you’ve shown your gratitude: you skip classes, rob vendors in broad daylight, humiliate me in public. After everything I’ve done for you.”

  “I never asked you to do any of it!”

  “No? Then why didn’t you leave two years ago? Why stay under my roof? Why accept the food and the clothing I’ve given you?”

  “Because I had no place else to go, thanks to you.”

  “Thanks to me?”

  “You’re the wanted criminal, not me. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d still be living in Jerusalem, not on this filthy rathole of an island in the middle of nowhere!”

  “You call this a rathole? I guess you’ve forgotten what your house in Jerusalem looked like? Or how your own mother treated you?”

  “It was better than this! You treat my sister and me like the dirt beneath your feet!”

  Nathan’s words stunned Joshua. “How can you say that?”

  “Because it’s the truth! The only reason you gave Miriam and me a home in the first place was because you killed her father.”

  Joshua went cold all over. “What did you say?”

  “I know what really happened to Maki. Mattan told me. It was your fault that the soldier killed him. You ran out of the door and opened your big fat mouth too soon.”

  Joshua stared at Nathan, too stunned to speak. It was true—Maki’s death was Joshua’s fault. But he’d never imagined that anyone else knew the truth.

  “Everyone around here thinks you’re such a big hero,” Nathan continued. “But I wonder what they’d say if they knew the truth. If they knew that Maki died because you screwed up!”

  Joshua grabbed Nathan by his upper arms and lifted him off the ground, shaking him. “Shut up, you little—!”

  “Go ahead, hit me. I dare you. When they ask me about the bruises, I’ll tell Miriam and everyone else what really happened to her father.”

  Joshua’s entire body trembled. He released Nathan, then turned and quickly strode away, well aware of what he might do to the boy if he lost control. He headed blindly toward the riverbank, then stumbled aimlessly around the deserted docks, trying not to imagine what would happen to his reputation if Nathan carried out his threat.

  Joshua told himself to stay calm. He could easily explain about Maki. He’d made an honest mistake in a moment of panic. He had been upset after killing the first guard because he had never killed anyone before. He had overreacted when he saw that the second guard had caught little Mattan. But even as Joshua replayed the events in his mind, he knew his excuses would sound feeble after so much time had passed. He would risk losing the entire community’s respect for not confessing right away as he should have, instead of waiting two years. They might wonder what else he was hiding. And the men might be reluctant to follow his leadership, afraid that he’d panic again in the heat of battle and cost someone else his life.

  Sweat soaked Joshua’s clothes, but he knew it wasn’t from the sun’s heat. He walked for a long time, wandering blindly around the island until he ended up back at the mud pits, where he’d started. Nathan was gone, but the workers had returned to their labors, standing knee-deep in ooze as they mixed mud and straw with their bare feet.

  The only way to save his reputation, Joshua decided, was to win back Nathan’s trust and friendship. But how could he do that? Joshua didn’t know anything about raising a son. He never should have agreed to adopt Nathan in the first place. He should have let his brother, Jerimoth, assume responsibility for Nathan as he had for Miriam’s younger brother, Mattan. Now it was too late.

  Not knowing what else to do, Joshua headed for the market square to ask Jerimoth’s advice. H
e found his brother in his booth bargaining with a customer over the price of a bolt of cloth. Joshua ducked beneath the welcome shade of the canopy and waited for the men to finish their haggling.

  “I need some advice,” Joshua said when the customer was gone. “I’m having problems with Nathan, and I need to know how you handle Mattan.”

  Jerimoth pulled up two rush-bottomed stools and motioned for Joshua to sit. “It’s no mystery,” he said. “Whenever I’m stuck, I simply ask myself what Abba would do.”

  His words made Joshua feel worse. Abba wouldn’t have lost his temper. He wouldn’t have slapped Nathan or threatened him. Joshua remembered how he and Manasseh had once skipped classes to go for a walk in the rain. Afterward, he had experienced Abba’s deep disappointment but not his anger. His father had never struck Joshua in his life. He gave a sigh of frustration.

  “I’m not very good at being a father.”

  Jerimoth motioned to the seat a second time. “Sit. Tell me what happened.”

  Joshua didn’t realize how drained he felt until he sank onto the stool. Jerimoth handed him a skin of water, and Joshua took a long drink, wiping his mouth with his fist.

  “The elders called me to the square a while ago,” he began. “They caught Nathan stealing. He’s been skipping classes, too.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I tried to question him, reprimand him…. But he was so rude to me, so disrespectful. And I don’t understand why. After all that I’ve done for that kid! I’ve given him everything—”

  “Except yourself.”

  Joshua felt his temper flare. “I’m a very busy man, Jerimoth. I’m responsible for everyone on this island.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So you’re saying Nathan’s behavior is my fault?”

  “No, I’m saying that because you’ve been too busy to be a father to him, maybe this is his way of getting your attention.”

  “By humiliating me in front of the city elders?”

  “Did it work? Did he get your attention?”

  “Yeah, I guess he did,” he said with a sigh. “But some of the things Nathan said to me … and the way he said them … it was as if he hates me.”