Day of War

by Cliff Graham

  Benaiah glanced back over his bodyguard and was satisfied that no one had heard him. Too much information given too soon only spread rumors among the troops.

  Their marching pace had gradually quickened over the day. His joints and muscles were still tired and painful from the ordeal of the week. His wounds from the lion’s claws ached, as if to remind him that they were still there, though it felt like three generations of his family had passed since his fight with the lion in the pit. The Amalekite raiding party he’d destroyed, the days of hard march, the destruction of his home—it was taking its toll, but he pushed it away. None of it mattered. There would be enough there when he needed it, just as there always was.

  On his back Benaiah carried his rations and the spear from the strange warrior in the woods. He also carried his war club, the root of solid oak with an embedded stone in the top. It did not kill cleanly. He had chosen it for that reason.

  The road followed a winding path through the lowland hills and eventually reached a gorge. Along the creek in the gorge, David ordered the men to fill their water bags and dip their heads. Benaiah sank his own face into the icy water, grateful for the shock, then shook his hair, slinging water over the men nearby. A few muttered at him. He saw that his men had broken into two squads, one staying with David as he paced among the soldiers, the other taking their water break. They would rotate positions. Good men. He had not even told them to do that. He nodded.

  As the men lined the banks of the creek to drink, Benaiah heard the voice of a foreigner rise above the noise of the company.

  “Is he insane?” the man grumbled. “We’ve been marching like this all day with no rest. Water or no water, I’m not going any further.” The rest of the man’s squad seconded him. Within moments, the growing chorus of discontent had spread along the creek bed next to the squad, until the entire company was complaining loudly that they could not go on.

  At first, Benaiah could not comprehend how men whose families had been taken as slaves could say something like that. Then he realized that many of those complaining did not have families, and others had only recently joined their army. They were not in prime fighting condition; their feet had not yet developed the calloused soles that could tread upon rocks for weeks. They were the hired blades, and they cared only about loot.

  Benaiah whistled for the leader of the bodyguard following David. The man came back, tunic dirty and scuffed from the days of marching, and nodded his head in respect.

  “Tell the leaders that we have trouble,” Benaiah said quietly. The man nodded again, with a quick look at the complaining men around them, and walked toward the far side of the clearing at a measured pace to avoid raising suspicion. He pulled David and Josheb aside to give them the message.

  Benaiah sighed and turned to the men along the stream near him. “Anyone who does not want to continue, raise his hand,” he said in a loud voice.

  Dozens of arms rose. Benaiah was stunned at the number. Almost two hundred, easily.

  “Why did you come in the first place, then?”

  A soldier said, “We’re too tired, and the march from Aphek has ruined our feet.” He held up a foot, and Benaiah saw that it had indeed become a bloody stump of flesh pocked with blisters and splinters of wood and thorn. He softened a bit. A foot soldier without the use of his feet was worthless. The men without families would not feel compelled to suffer like this.

  David walked up beside Benaiah. “What is it?”

  “Our pace has been too fast for the new troops. Their feet are ruined. No condition to fight. Look at them.”

  David perused the ranks. Some of them stared at him carefully, wary of seeing the sword unsheathed against them once more. Many eyes refused to meet his. He inspected them for a moment, then nodded. “All who wish may stay here. You are no use to me in the fight—you would probably only get more men killed. We will bring the families back.” There were sighs of relief from the ranks.

  Joab stepped up, shock plain on his face. “Sir! You cannot let them —”

  David raised a hand. “Contradict me again when I am giving orders, nephew, and you will pray for death. That is my vow.”

  Joab was taken aback by the rebuke and did not respond. David’s face was murderous. Even Benaiah was startled.

  Louder, to the group, David said, “Men with useless feet are equally useless in battle, brothers. Do not hold it against them, because your feet might suffer a similar fate before this march is over. It is Yahweh who will give us a victory today, so the size of our force will not matter. Does anyone know the story of Gideon the Judge?” Nods scattered across the group. “He winnowed out his force until there were only a few, and Yahweh crushed the Midianites before them like a man crushes a scorpion.”

  David called for those who were continuing to reform their ranks. Daylight was limited, and they would need to reach the Amalekite encampment early to plan an assault. Refreshed by the water, men sprang up. Some even called out to their wounded fellows that all would be well.

  Benaiah had to smile. Despite their near mutiny back in Ziklag and everything else that made them society’s reprobates, most were good troops.

  They gathered and moved out, leaving a few officers behind to keep order until they returned. Four hundred of them crawled out of the ravine and kept pace with the jog David set at the front, following a trail of slightly trampled grass and dirt. Benaiah guessed that this path would eventually take them to the trade routes into the south and the lands of Egypt.

  Besor Brook, the water flowing beside them in the ravine, would eventually cross the trade routes to the south as well. Whoever led the Amalekites was taking no precautions to cover his trail, apparently assuming no one would follow them. That lack of care led David to allow his men to run in the open, with the scouts ahead and in the forest keeping an eye out for enemy stragglers.

  Someone shouted from a field to their left. Two men, road scouts who had been sent ahead to spy the route, were carrying between them a young boy, bedraggled, his head hanging and unmoving. His hair was trimmed short, and he wore only a wrapped cloth around his waist. David motioned them over.

  “Sir, this boy was lying in a field along the road ahead. He is alive.”

  They let him down next to the road and splashed water over his face. It revived him a bit, and he blinked a few times trying to focus on them. Benaiah recognized that he was an Egyptian.

  They brought the boy some cakes of figs and clusters of raisins, and he ate them sloppily. David must have recognized his race as well because he began to question him in that language. “Whom do you belong to, and where did you come from?”

  The boy, obviously scared, said nothing at first. When David knelt down next to him and repeated the question a little softer, he stared around the group and replied, and Benaiah translated.

  “I am Egyptian. An Amalekite slave. I got sick, and my master left me behind three days ago. He was raiding the Kerethites in Judah’s lands. And we were in Caleb’s lands too, and we burned the Ziklag fortress of the Philistines.” When he said the last, some of the men who had been crowding around began to shout angrily, threatening to spear him.

  David raised his arm to calm them. “Will you give me details about them?”

  Even though the boy hadn’t understood the threats, he seemed to sense that he was in danger. “If you swear by your god that no one will hurt me. And do not give me back to my master.”

  David nodded. “By Yahweh, God of Israel, no harm will come to you.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sherizah watched the debauchery in front of her without emotion. Men paraded around without clothes, pulling at the women among the captives. Men passed around wine, danced heathen dances around campfires, and played on their instruments songs that seemed to Sherizah to have no order or structure.

  Benaiah was north, far away. She was the captive of the barbaric man in the tent now. And that hard man had been watching her. She knew that her time with him was coming. She was too
weary and frightened to care. She thought about making a run for it, hoping to be brought down with a sword stroke. She might even welcome death.

  Benaiah had grown cold to her. His words had been soft once, gentle, soothing her with love. Those words were gone now, as he was always gone. He’d wanted sons, and she had not been able to give them to him. She had given him daughters, but now their faces were lost to her, buried in a part of her mind that she no longer looked into. Their lives had been short, and she hoped that perhaps they had gone to Yahweh. She had long since understood that Benaiah found better company among the men than with her. Grief would be difficult for a man to understand.

  She pushed the hair from her forehead. There was nothing to tie it back with, so it flew freely across her face in the slight breeze. There was noise in the tent, and a man emerged, pulling a woman out of the entrance. The woman clawed at the soldier pulling her by the hair and screamed. Dezir, the wife of one of David’s men.

  Had she been violated? It did not look that way — yet. That had been the strange and nagging thought that followed her all the way from Ziklag. Not one person had been hurt among the Hebrews. No woman had yet been violated, no child harmed, no animals slaughtered. It was impossible to know the raiders’ intent.

  A guard approached her, and Sherizah saw that it was her time. Before the guard could lay rough hands on her, she stood and walked inside.

  The Amalekite chieftain was stuffing roasted pig and bread into his mouth. Next to him was the large man who had first been seen at the city. He was different than the rough Amalekites: his skin was bronze like a burnished shield and gleamed with oil. He wore paint on his eyes and face, and he was almost elegant-looking in his fine linen garments. Were it not for his tremendous size, the largest man she had ever seen, she would have thought him to be a musician or entertainer. He regarded her, as did the chieftain.

  “You have a husband?” asked the chieftain. She was startled that the chieftain could speak her language and nodded a response.

  “He is a warrior? David’s man?”

  She nodded.

  “They are in the north?”

  She repeated her nod but did not look at them. Benaiah had told her long ago that if she was ever captured, to simply obey every thing they asked her to do. Just stay alive, he had told her. But for what? To live for what? He was gone anyway.

  Another Amalekite walked in and tilted his head in respect to the chieftain. The two men chatted in the Amalekite tongue a moment, and she allowed herself a glance at the furnishings of the tent. It was sparse, except for a pile of cushions stolen from some Philistine city; she recognized the craftsmanship. A torch flickered in a bracket on the center post. Maps were scattered on a short table, and the two men were reclining on the floor against the brightly colored cushions. The chieftain reached up and tore at the meat every so often.

  Pigs. Unclean animals.

  Sherizah stood, arms crossed at the wrists in front of her, waiting for them to question her again. Her eyes flickered to the giant, then away when she saw that he was watching her. She had sensed him watching her since she entered the tent. He made her uneasy. She seemed to him someone who was to be feared more than any of the others.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  There is blood on my face. I wipe it. I see Joab by the burning roof, holding something in his hand. A head. He smiles.

  War, son of Jehoiada, he says. Love it. Drink it deeply.

  I nod. Should be harder, killing. Especially women, children. Sherizah always asks me if I regret the bloodshed. Yes, Sherizah. No, Sherizah.

  There is David. He speaks to Josheb, Shammah, Eleazar. His mighty Three. Does he not trust me? Why am I not held in the same regard? Salty, coppery taste. My blood or enemy blood? Does not matter. Warm and bitter.

  Next to Joab is Abishai; an Amalekite man is kneeling before them. He is begging for mercy. None would be given. It never is. David is silent as the sword plunges into the man’s neck. Joab spits, pulls the blade out. Abishai stares at his brother’s blade. I hear screams behind me. Children are watching. I curse their fathers, because I will spend the rest of my days bringing death to Amalekites. I will make them run in terror from me, and go to the grave with my sword in their chest, and they will regret the day they took my daughters from me.

  Make it quick, Benaiah, says David. Do not drag this out. Club them first, don’t let them feel it.

  I nod. But I will make them feel it. I will never relent until every one of them is dead.

  My beautiful girls gone forever …

  David touched Benaiah on the arm and pointed toward an olive grove at the far right side of the field. “I sent the Three to block their retreat at the mouth of that canyon. They can hide, then step out and defend that narrow gap. We need to let the Amalekites think they can escape that way.”

  Benaiah nodded. Funneling so many of the Amalekites straight at such a small force would be certain death for lesser men. But that was why they were the Three.

  Benaiah and David sat on the edge of a small rise overlooking an enormous wheat field. A grove of trees jutted into the field to their left in the shape of a lance, and from there Joab would lead the attack. The wheat had been trampled and destroyed by the raiding army without regard for martial discipline. The Amalekite camp sprawled across a vast area, all the way to a distant ridge scored by canyons.

  Music, played by drunk musicians, wailed without any semblance of order or rhythm. Men laughed and kept the noise coming as if making it louder would solve the problem.

  The scouts, men of the tribe of Issachar highly skilled at spying, had given a thorough report. The Amalekite commander had allowed his men to scatter and break ranks for the celebration, and David intended to make him pay for that mistake. Men roved about drunkenly. The sentries posted were staring back toward the fires, envious of their comrades, unwittingly ruining their night vision.

  Benaiah scanned the camp for the rest of the captives. There was a tent pitched hastily in the center, and a line of women sat outside. He could not tell if they were the Ziklag captives or others stolen earlier. Children were playing in the dirt nearby, oblivious to the pressing danger. Twilight was coming, and the soldiers in the camp were drinking even more freely, a good thing.

  When David and his men had first discovered the camp, they’d all been elated that the captives were still alive. Now they were focused and ready.

  Benaiah looked at his fading shadow stretching across the rocks in front of him. The insects had begun to emerge for the night. Not much light left for the slaughter. David whispered something to Joab on his left, who grunted and crawled away with Abishai behind him.

  All was now ready. The Three were undoubtedly already sliding forward on their bellies through the trees to their right, outside the view of the sentries, who were not watching anyway. They would wait for Joab while he moved one hundred men through the trees to the left. Abishai would split off with his hundred-man company and post between David and Joab. The two generals would begin their assault into the field of the Amalekite camp, killing everything that moved except the captives and livestock.

  When they’d successfully crushed the raiders’ left flank and made it to the middle of the wheat field, they would form a perimeter around the surviving captives, and David would lead an assault from the center to meet them. When the Amalekites retreated — running blindly in terror, most likely — David’s men would try to funnel them toward the entrance of the canyon, where the Three would be present to block them. They would all spend the rest of the night sweeping the surrounding forest for stragglers.

  As they waited for the troops to get into position, David and Benaiah watched the tent around which the women sat despondently. Guards were choosing women to go into the tent so the commander could choose among them. No doubt the rest of the men would split up those remaining among themselves. Benaiah strained his eyes against the distance to see Sherizah, but the women were letting their heads sag in defeat, and he could not
spot his wife.

  Then he did, at the front of the line near the entrance of the tent.

  He seized David’s arm, and David patted his hand, as if he’d noticed her already. David was probably searching for his own wives.

  Sherizah was barely visible between the celebrating soldiers. Benaiah fought the urge to rush forward as he stared at her, feeling something wrench in his spirit. He felt the weight of all the years he’d neglected her. The times he had abandoned her for the company of his men, the times he had left her alone for months after the births of the girls. Do not think of that now. Kill Amalekites first.

  Joab crawled forward on his chest, feeling the scratching undergrowth across his face. His men were disciplined and followed him without complaint through the roughest terrain he could have chosen. Their sentries weren’t even watching, but Joab led his men with caution anyway.

  Joab finally stopped, and Abishai, crawling behind him, halted as well. The older brother pointed to his right, toward the field of the encampment and a hedge of thick brush. Using hand gestures, he indicated that Abishai should line up his men in that hedge. Abishai nodded and gave the signal for “I understand.” He then repeated the orders back to Joab, who dismissed him with a pat on the shoulder when he’d finished. Abishai turned to his adjutant and relayed the commands, repeating the process.

  When both of them had turned to go, Joab continued leading his men along the dry creek bottom he had found on his scout. It disguised their movements perfectly. Bramble undergrowth and thorns snagged his tunic. Rocks scraped his bare legs, but he did not notice, his mind intent on preparation for the first assault. Sweat dripped down the side of his face and stained the collar of his tunic. He wiped it from his face, smudging the dirt into his eyes. Sounds poured through the woods, awful wailings of strange instruments. Joab ignored it and focused on the movement of his men.

  One hundred men. A full company. They needed to hurry to the grove of trees David pointed out earlier, sticking out into the field like a peninsula. They needed to attack before light was fully gone. Once the ambush had been ignited, darkness would be their ally, but maneuvering was critical in the opening moments, and for that, all David’s troops would have to be able to see.