Sunrise on the Mediterranean

by Suzanne Frank

  He was fifteen? Fourteen? Even soldiers in the Civil War weren’t that young, at least not at first. “She needs your strength beside her,” I said. He gave me a look that said I’d betrayed him, so I motioned him closer, whispered to him. “It is a hard thing for you, I know, but if something should, Dagon forbid, happen to Yamir, then you are the crown prince of Ashqelon. You are too valuable to risk.”

  He looked at me reproachfully but must have realized the truth of the statement. “I will pray that Dagon watch over my brother,” he said. “That way in the next battle he can sit up here and I can fight in the valley.”

  Would there be a tomorrow? I wondered. Another battle? Didn’t it take the Jews a long time, like centuries, to vanquish the Philistines? I just didn’t know where we were on that time line. David. King David. Holy shit.

  Takala stayed focused on the valley, but I was certain she had heard every word. With reluctant steps I walked to the edge of the cliff. Below us by a hundred feet, the Pelesti walked in orderly rows, each platoon surrounding one of the team-drawn chariots. The sun glinted off their spear handles and shields. They looked invincible. It was hard to reconcile these Philistines with the term that had come to mean barbarians. They had mosaic floors, for crying out loud!

  The sun beat down on us, though a breeze kept us comfortable. It must have been much warmer in the valley. “A wind sweeps across the Refa’im from haYam about zenith,” Takala said. “It is a good time for an attack.”

  I saw the band of highlanders approaching from the north. They carried rounded helmets and wore metal caps. “They do not have strong weapons,” Takala said. “We alone know the secrets of smelting. Their weapons bend and break with ease.” Compared with the Pelesti, who wore only a breastplate, the highlanders had almost full armor.

  Then again, if the Pelesti were expecting bronze weapons—the bronze age of weaponry was before the iron, another useful tidbit from being an archaeologist’s daughter—they didn’t need a lot of protection. The highlanders, however, were up against iron.

  But the highlanders were Jews. I couldn’t get the ultimate result out of my mind. No Philistines remained. I really wanted some Pepto-Bismol.

  The highlanders’ dresses gave them a scaly appearance. Nothing matched, the weapons didn’t gleam, and the men seemed to walk with very little energy. Was this the same group as the night before?

  “Perhaps they wearied themselves at the tani’n last night,” Takala said cheerfully. “We will smite them and be in Lakshish by dusk.”

  I was not so easily persuaded. They were clever, last night proved it. Who knew what they were up to now? They marched more slowly than the Pelesti, as they were coming down from the forest.

  “What are they doing, Sea-Mistress?” Wadia asked, confused.

  I couldn’t tell what they were doing. Getting ready for a picnic, maybe? I stared at the highlanders. They’d all sat down.

  These were the children of Israel? What was going on? Surely they knew we were watching? Yet before us, they sat down as though they couldn’t walk a step farther. Were they taking a nap?

  The Pelesti were almost upon them. It was going to be a slaughter. I had been concerned about the poor Pelesti being defeated by these morons? I couldn’t watch; it was going to be awful. Couldn’t we just call a draw?

  “They aren’t even fighting,” Wadia said, his voice trembling. I didn’t have to uncover my eyes; I heard the cries, the fear, the horror. Clashing metal against metal, screams of men and horses.

  “Dagon be praised,” Takala shouted. “We are winning!”

  I looked down, forcing myself to watch. Was I wrong about history? Was history changing?

  The valley was deep, a wadi that had been shaped by millennia of flowing waters, carving this channel from the stone walls. Trees ranged both sides, with a greater forest at the foot of the mountain where the valley abutted it.

  With horses, chariots, uniforms, and feathered head-dresses that made them seem even taller and broader, the Pelesti looked like an army. The highlanders looked like farmers who’d been given swords ten minutes ago.

  They backed up, half the number fading into the forest at their back, the other half getting into rough columns. Blood pounded in my ears, and my hand was slick against the lance. The highlanders seemed surprised to see the Pelesti, but then at a call, a weird whining call, a shofar, the lexicon whispered—half of them rose and half of them crouched.

  We heard low, faint whistles as we saw the Pelesti dropping to the ground. What had felled them? Then I saw the arrows and spears flying through the air. Green uniforms were suddenly stained red. Feathered headdresses were hitting the dirt.

  Yet the highlanders kept backing up.

  “We are pushing them into the forest,” Takala said joyfully. “We will have sent That One and his troops back to Mamre by dusk!”

  The lexicon whipped out the map again. Mamre was Hebron. Neither of those names meant a thing to me. The highlanders were vanishing into the woods, but not as men who were being chased. They were sneaking away.

  “It’s a trap,” I whispered, suddenly realizing what they had done. “Get them out!” I cried, turning to Takala.

  “We are winning,” she said, unwilling to look away.

  I grabbed her arm. “We have been lured in! Get out! It’s a trap!” I pointed down to the battle. The heel of the valley had become too narrow and too steep for the chariots and horses, the main Pelesti weapons. In their enthusiasm they had progressed beyond the safety zone.

  The color drained from her face. “They can’t turn around,” she whispered. “They can’t back up!”

  The fighting grew more intense, two Pelesti for every Israelite, as I watched. My heart was in my throat as I wondered what to do. Was I right or wrong? The forest seemed empty, but waiting. I held Wadia’s hand on one side, while I held my spear with the other, grinding it into the ground with the force of my fear. There were fewer and fewer highlanders. Some appeared to be on the ground, slain. But not many. The Pelesti started backing away from the forest, returning to where the chariots and horses had bottlenecked.

  A breeze blew over us, the same breeze Takala had talked about. Then a sound rustled in the trees, the sound of heavy machinery moving.

  The soldiers heard it, too; then the triumphant cry, “Shaday rides ahead of the elohim!” Loudly. Again and again.

  In my mental lexicon elohim brought to mind countless, endless divisions of angelic beings. Not fluffy little cherubs with bows and arrows, but fearful specters with bloodstained swords and the wingspans of pterodactyls.

  “Shaday with the elohim!”

  Highlanders suddenly poured from the trees, escalating this skirmish into a battle royal. Adrenaline rushed through me with such force that for a moment I was deaf. My God, no. No!

  The first headdress down was that of Yamir. Takala screamed her denial while Wadia watched, tears flowing down his cheeks. Her son was dead. I was shocked; this was a man I’d known. Now dead.

  I wanted to hide my face, to turn away. That seemed a shameful reaction, though. Blood flowed in my veins, warrior’s blood from Cromwell’s time to the Vietnam fiasco. These soldiers deserved to have someone watch and to bear witness to their bravery.

  In that moment I became Pelesti. The people I’d eaten with, the smiles we’d shared, the laughter; they became my people.

  After a while I grew numb. Takala and Wadia stood beside me, watching. The mingled odors of blood and excrement wafted up to us. We held hands as we observed the pride of the Pelesti, their horses and chariots, become their death sentence.

  The remaining Pelesti soldiers tried to scramble over the mess of wood and horseflesh that trapped them in the valley. The horses, terrified by the scent of blood, spooked by the sound of metal and men’s cries, bucked and reared, trying to free themselves. At the end, they probably killed as many Pelesti as the highlanders. Those who managed to get across the bottleneck fled toward Lakshish.

  “We need to go,
” Takala said. “Take Wadia to Ashdod or Gaza.”

  I turned to her, and everything became surreal. The “za” had just left her mouth when her body jerked. Her eyes widened, then her body twitched again. As I watched, a red stain darkened the blue of her dress; her eyes lost focus but didn’t close. I shouted for Wadia, and we slowed her fall to the ground.

  Two snaps and she screamed. She was bleeding profusely, her skin clammy as the pain began. “Derkato,” she gasped out, “you must take Wadia. You must leave.” She’d been shot twice in the back: when she fell down the shafts broke, burying the heads deep in her flesh.

  “We cannot leave you,” I said, wrapping up a cloak and tucking it beneath her neck.

  “He is the crown prince,” she said.

  My words that had been so flippant, so manipulative, earlier came back to me. They were true. He was the only prince left.

  “You must get him to Gaza or to Ashdod,” she said. “What about—”

  “I’m dying, you worthless goddess!” she gasped out. “Leave me with my soldiers! Go! Now!”

  Wadia was holding her hand, weeping. She squeezed it and smiled at him. “Be wise, my son. Go now.”

  “I can’t leave—”

  “You are king, Wadia. You owe it to your people.” Takala stared him down, sweat beading her forehead. Someone tugged on my arm, and I watched my hand reach out for Wadia’s.

  “You,” Takala gasped, glaring at me. “You are responsible for the city—you are our goddess—” Her words ended on a scream as the pain increased. I pulled Wadia along with me, following blindly.

  Another roar of humanity surrounded us as we walked away. Wadia ran back to the edge of the cliff, tugging me after him. Those soldiers who had fought so bravely to get over the obstacles, to make it safely home, now were being cut down ruthlessly. Another contingency of highlanders poured from the hills below us, falling on the tired, terrified Pelesti. The Philistines turned and fought, but they were already beaten. “No,” I whispered, too appalled to check my language. “Please, God, no.”

  A soldier wrenched my arm, dragging me down the mountain. I pulled Wadia along in turn. He threw Wadia and me inside a chariot. “Ride for Ashdod,” he said. “Tell them we need reinforcements!”

  He’d already lashed the horses; we were rambling across the uneven ground with no one at the wheel. Soldiers surrounded us, highlanders with their battle-lusting eyes, beards, gleaming helmets, and constant cries of “Shaday rides with the elohim!”

  I grabbed the reins, trying clumsily to control the frantic horses. Wadia pushed me aside and shouted at me to get down. He lashed the horses again, throwing me to the floor as we bounced and jounced in a wild ride down the hillside. My bones were jabbing out of my body, my teeth rattling loose.

  We careened down the mountain to where the terrain flattened out, but our speed did not change. I braced myself and stood up.

  His eyes were blank; the poor kid was in serious shock. He’d seen his brother killed, his mother shot, his people massacred. I couldn’t imagine his pain, but I didn’t want him to fall apart. There was still too much to do. “Tell me about the time the Pelesti took the highlanders’teraphim,” I shouted over the sound of the horses. Anything to bring life back into his eyes.

  “It was in battle,” he said, as though he were reading a Tele-PrompTer. “We won the battle, so we took their totem as a trophy.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What was the point?”

  “We would take it through ha Hamishah, so that all the people could know that Dagon was superior, that we had captured the god of the highlanders.”

  “Why didn’t that work?” My questions were as rote as his responses.

  A little more color was tingeing his skin, and we were slowing down. “Their totem was deadly. When people touched it, they died. When they got close to it, they became sick with tumors, then they died.”

  “The highlanders had it booby-trapped?” I asked. Obviously “booby-trapped” didn’t work in this language. It came out as “rigged for evil.”

  He shrugged. “The king of Ashdod sent the totem to Gaza. It killed more people there. Then they sent it to Lakshish. The king there didn’t want it, for almost twenty thousand Pelesti had died in five months.” His gaze finally focused on me. “They cheated. When you capture the totem of a people, he is supposed to work for you, not against you.”

  I nodded.

  “Then the king of Lakshish guessed it was lethal because it was angry with our actions. It had not received the proper, holy treatment that a totem of a god would deserve and expect. So we sent it to the Temple of Dagon in Ashqelon. It is the holiest place in Pelesti.”

  “What happened?”

  “After the first night, the priests found the statue of Dagon lying on the floor, broken at the waist. The totem of the highlanders had been laid opposite it.”

  “That must have bewildered the priests,” I said, realizing that the breaks I’d seen in the statue were not from lousy craftsmanship, but from the totem. What was the totem of the Jews?

  “It did. It happened the next night, breaking off Dagon’s hands this time.”

  A mergod with no hands would be like a screen door on a submarine, utterly useless.

  “Immediately the citizens of Ashqelon sent it back to Lakshish. The priests there, those who had survived it the first time, said, ‘lo lo lo!’ and put it in a cart aimed toward the highlands.” His eyes began to gleam. “However, when it got there, according to the spies who followed, it was still mad, because it killed the highlanders, too.”

  We reached another rise; somehow we’d stumbled onto another battlefield.

  The sun was setting, but still we could clearly see the bodies, beautifully hewn of copper and bronze flesh, cut with muscle, graceful and strong. Now they were laid in unnatural positions. Masses of blood had soaked the grass brown, splattered the trees. It lay pooled and congealed beneath bodies.

  Had we moved backward, or had the battle been here before? “Apparently the highlanders”—Wadia spat to show his disgust—“are chasing us back to Gezer.” He looked over his shoulder, back the way we’d come. “I guess they went around Lakshish.”

  “We’re supposed to go to Ashdod.”

  Wadia looked at me, his eyes as haunted as a sixty-year-old man’s. “Lo, only me.”

  Takala’s words floated over me. The city was my responsibility. I looked southward. “Ashqelon is down there?”

  “Ken.”

  Though my legs were shaking, I dismounted. “If they are there, how do I get in?”

  After instructing me how to invade the city, should I need to, Wadia drove off to Ashdod, to gather more defenses. The boy had become a man.

  I’d realized that just walking away was no longer possible. Alternately cursing Takala and glaring at God, I made my way toward the sea. I should reach it, and Ashqelon, by morning.

  Stars scattered the sky above. It was hard to believe this was the same universe as this morning. I felt different, yet nothing had been moved. Trees still grew upward, dark still concealed, and boys still missed their mothers. The impact of the day felled me.

  I’d seen a battle. A war, complete with death and maiming. I’d done nothing but watch.

  I had no idea of time, only that I was tired. Bone tired. Had all of this taken just one twenty-four-hour period? Only this morning we were setting off, thinking ourselves the victors. Oh God, I thought. But are you the God of the opposing team? Does that mean the Pelesti were doomed before they even began? It seemed terribly unfair to have the deck stacked so.

  These were men killing men. The men who wrote the Bible, the “thou shalt not kill” part, killing men. “I’m going to become a Hindu,” I whispered.

  CHAPTER 5

  EVEN THIS FAR AWAY from the city of Ashqelon I could hear the cries, the clash and clatter, of ancient war. The Pelesti and highlanders were still fighting?

  My steps hastened as I thought of Cheftu. Was he safe? Had he been hurt? Why had
n’t he showed up in Lakshish?

  When I stepped through the treeline, I saw men at each other’s throats. Still. This was why there was yet a Middle East peace knot, I realized. These people, even in all these intervening centuries, never learned how to get along. Maybe we should just let them kill themselves now and save history and the rest of the planet a lot of grief? I couldn’t recall ever feeling so disgusted with the human condition before.

  I skirted around the battlefield, into the growing shadows of the valley. Men’s cries, horses’ screams, and the incessant banging of metal on metal rang in my eardrums. Thousands of men fought, amid the remains of their comrades. It was ghastly chaos.

  The Pelesti wielding swords were old men, their weapons too heavy, their armor in disrepair. These were the reinforcements for those slain in battle? My despair grew.

  The columns and order were gone. Now it was simply feather-headed man fighting bearded man. The crenellated walls of the city were lined with Pelesti, waiting for the battle to get close enough so that the arrows, spears, and hot oil they had prepared would have effect.

  On the horizon I saw the sun was rising, bloodstained colors on a bloodstained land. The light peeked over the beach, climbing quickly, throwing the shadows of man killing man on the ground, black and gray against the reddish brown grass. The shadows of dawn were dispersing, the sounds of battle, of screaming and dying, fading away.

  In a matter of hours the Pelesti would be no more. Not in Ashqelon. I backtracked to the shore, then edged through the sacred lake enclosure. The crocodiles were sunning themselves in the morning light.

  The Temple of Dagon was empty, for the male priests had donned headdresses to go defend their lives and way of life. The priestesses were, presumably, standing on the city walls with the people.

  I let myself into the room where Cheftu and I had made love. Cheftu was there, chained through his ears to the wall, huddled up. Asleep? Dead?