by Stant Litore
“Tribes of the north!” she cried. “Put away your fear! Bury it. Raise a cairn over it. Shun it as you would the dead. It will do you as much harm, or more. Remember that you are men. And men of Israel, whose fathers wrestled with God in the desert and wrung blessings from him!” Her voice rose nearly to a scream. “God gave you this land of promise, took it from others who were here before you and gave it into your hands. Now defend it!”
The men looked at her, but none raised their voices to affirm her words. Their faces were still pale with fear. Devora faltered. She was used to men listening attentively when the navi spoke, before springing to action. But these men had never stood before the navi’s seat. In their faces, Devora saw that her words neither shamed them nor inspired them. In their eyes, she saw that they were merely listening to a woman because a few moments ago there had been no woman in the camp, and she was strange to them.
“Listen,” she told them, trying to keep her voice steady. Their gaze unnerved her. “Everyone fears the dead,” she said. “I do too. But the dead are weak, and the God of your land is strong. Do you fear to face the dead without spears, shields, with just a fence pole in your hands? The dead don’t even have that. They are just stumbling, clumsy bodies. Taking them down,” she chopped her arm through the air, “is like cutting trees. Our fathers broke a strong wall at Yeriho. The dead are not stronger than a stone wall.”
The men stared at her in silence.
“Be strong and courageous,” she urged them. “Show our God that you do not doubt, that you are not less than your fathers were.” She faltered. “Do you not know who I am?” she asked at last.
“You are from Shiloh,” one man called out.
“I am the navi of Israel,” she said. “I see what God sees.”
“God has turned his eyes away,” another man called. “We passed an orchard—it was blighted.”
A murmur rose from the men, an angry, despairing sound. Hurriya shuddered, and Devora’s arm tightened about her. She understood; the men had seen the malakh ha-mavet, even as she had. And the only vision of victory she had to share was an image of a woman driving a peg through a corpse’s skull. She’d told Barak that women would protect Israel. But if she told these men that, these cruel northern men, they would surely only laugh at her with that cold, bitter laughter that she knew all too well. What could she tell them? These were not supplicants waiting on her judgment beneath the olive tree—yet they were waiting on her judgment. They were waiting to hear what God might say to them, what accusation God might make to explain the presence of the walking dead, or what defense God might make for the removal of his protection. All their eyes on her. So many eyes filled with dread.
“God will defend us,” she said hoarsely. “He fights with us.” The inadequacy of her words shook her.
“Let’s go,” Hurriya whispered, turning her head so that her lips were not far from the navi’s ear. “Please, let’s just go.”
“Be still,” Devora whispered back. She gazed out over those despairing faces and understood the Canaanite’s panic. She had miscalculated. All it would take was the wrong word spoken, and these men might take their despair and terror out on her. She could feel Zadok’s tension behind her, as though all the air around the nazarite was stretched tight, ready to snap. Omri at least had slipped away, no doubt uncomfortable around the nazarite.
Lappidoth had wanted her to take all the nazarites with her. Swallowing, she conceded that he might perhaps have been right.
But her anger was stronger than her fear. These men would not wilt like a dying crop and leave her and this Canaanite girl and the other women of the land to face the dead for them. “Where is Barak ben Abinoam?” she cried.
Mutely, several of the men gestured toward the shore, and Devora glanced there and saw by the water one tent larger than the others, a great pavilion dyed in earth colors, rich browns and reds. Devora lifted her eyes, caught Zadok’s gaze, nodded toward the pavilion. Then she turned her back on the scared men, coldly, deliberately. Keeping her arm tight around the Canaanite, whose breathing was quick and shallow, perhaps from fever, perhaps from fear.
Devora gave the tent a grim look.
She would make sure this was a meeting Barak ben Abinoam would never forget.
KADOSH
BARAK WAITED, cross-legged, on the rug-covered floor of his pavilion. He could hear the navi’s voice outside, speaking to his frightened men. He cursed Nimri in the silence of his heart for failing to bring him the Ark, that he might burn the unclean dead from the land. As a child sitting between his grandfather’s knees, he’d heard of how the Ark had burned dry the Tumbling Water itself, which south of Kinnor Sea was not the stream it was here but rather a roaring, crashing river falling out of the high hills. He’d heard how the tribes had crossed over on dry ground. Of how the Ark had brought drought to their enemies or kindled their tents like straw. He glanced at his spear where it rested against one of the four poles of his tent. A spear was enough for a man to carry against raiders from the sea—but against the dead?
Barak heard the sounds of horse and saddle outside of the door of his tent and straightened. She was here, the navi, just outside. He dreaded this meeting but had determined that Devora would come to him, here. He would not argue with a woman where his men could see and hear. Especially this woman.
She was kadosh, set apart. Which meant she couldn’t be understood, no more than God. She was a woman; when he’d faced her on her hill above Shiloh, he’d seen the fineness of her features, her smallness, the shape of her body within her dress. She should be in her husband’s tent, pleasing him or mending his garments, or preparing stew and warm milk for him. But she was not in her husband’s tent. She was here. And it was to her, out of all the men and women of the land, that God chose to speak and reveal what was to come. She and the Ark were both vessels to carry words spoken by God. One vessel of wood, one of flesh, both were reminders that God was at hand.
He took a small breath; he didn’t know how to handle her.
Zadok entered Barak’s pavilion first and moved aside to stand by the door of the tent, tall and glowering, the light from Barak’s small fire playing off the hard, unforgiving edges of his face. A moment later Devora swept in with a swish of her long, travel-stained white dress and fury in her eyes.
The navi did not do anything Barak might have expected of a woman entering his tent. Devora did not kneel before him on the rug nor did she sit. She strode across the tent, giving him hardly time to lean back from the intrusion before her hand whipped across his face, striking him hard enough to black his vision for an instant.
He caught her wrist even as she drew it back, held it tightly. Her eyes were dark as the midnight at the bottom of a lake.
“Release the navi’s hand.” A growl from Zadok at the door of the tent.
Breathing hard, his pulse pounding in his temples, Barak gazed into those midnight eyes a moment before glancing past Devora to see the nazarite standing like a tower, filling even the war-leader’s voluminous pavilion. Barak’s own growl was deep in his throat. But this was the navi. She was kadosh. Forbidden to touch her. He let go of Devora’s hand, his teeth bared from the effort of holding in his rage. His cheek stung.
“How dare you,” the navi hissed, standing before him. “Israel needs you. How dare you betray the Covenant so.”
He rose slowly to his feet, breathing deep. “Where is Nimri?” he growled.
“Dealt with.” Devora nearly spat the words, and the threat in them took Barak aback. His anger flickered down like a fire growing cold; he was bewildered. What had the navi done to that belligerent herdsman of Naphtali tribe? What could the navi do?
“Give one reason, one, why I shouldn’t deal with you likewise.” Though Devora’s head barely came to Barak’s chin, her presence filled the tent. “God is not an idol of wood you can cart about, wine-drinker. You think God is a—a weapon for your hand!” Her face was flushed with fury, those eyes darker by the moment. “
But you are a weapon in God’s hand, Barak!”
He bristled. He would not be upbraided by this woman, like some boy come late to dinner with unwashed hands. “I am no god’s weapon and no man’s,” he growled. “I am a vintner who has been eleven days from my vineyard while dead prowl about it, and I fear for the harvest.” He lifted his hand when she started to speak, and to his surprise she stopped and listened, though her eyes flashed. “I do want the Ark. I see it isn’t coming.” For some reason he found himself needing to persuade her. His voice had an edge to it. “Some of the men in this camp want to thieve our few horses and ride after the dead now, this night, and be done with it. Men of Omri’s sort. Others wish to slip away when I’m not looking. It is only by a hair that I hold this raid together, navi!” He was shouting now but could not stop. “These men need an Ark. Something holy, something kadosh, something they can keep their eyes on, that will tell them where they are supposed to stand and where they are supposed to walk, in what direction, whether to fight or flee. Something they will trust more than they trust me. They need an Ark. I sent Nimri for it—” He took a breath. “I had little time, and I hoped he would deal with the high priest in my stead—”
“Nimri slew the high priest.”
A silence brittle enough for a single word to shatter. For several moments, no word did. Barak’s face went completely white. The tent seemed to tilt toward him, and he could hear every beat of his heart.
Unthinkable.
He fought to breathe.
“I—did not mean that it should come to that,” he whispered.
The silence stretched until it was taut and tense. Devora’s face grew colder. Zadok loomed by the door of the pavilion with his arms folded across his chest, like some monument in fertile lands on the other side of the desert. Their eyes were on Barak with an intensity that shook him. His palms were sweaty, his throat too tight for words.
The high priest. Slain.
Nimri—what had he done? A scream was rising somewhere in the back of his mind.
“You’re more heathen than Hebrew,” Devora said at last. Her voice was like the winter wind through a door. She turned with a dismissiveness to her movements, as though she had no more time to waste with him. Zadok drew aside the tent flap and preceded her, and in a moment she was gone and the tent was too full of thunderous silence. Barak swayed on his feet.
The high priest was dead. The blight in Barak’s vineyard appeared vividly before his heart. He had taken up the spear, pleading with God to shelter his vineyard while he defended the vineyards of other men. What wrath had that ass Nimri brought down on them all? Barak’s covenant with God was already a fragile, provisional thing.
He burst into motion, sprang from his tent. Outside, dark was falling.
“Navi!”
She was already on horseback, with a young Canaanite in the saddle before her. Zadok was mounting his black gelding. Men stood at the egresses of nearby tents, watching with wide eyes.
“You can’t leave!” Barak shouted, his voice pitched in a way that shamed him. “The men—”
“I am not leaving.” She nodded toward the lake. “I am riding to that settlement.”
Barak shook his head. “Not alone—”
“God has something to show me there. There was a vision as we came down from the hills.” She nudged Shomar forward, turning her head enough that Barak could hear her speak over her shoulder, though she did not look at him. “There’s something in the cedar houses I need to see.”
Barak glanced at the lake and the silent houses. “I’ll get men.”
“I’ll hear God better without them.” She and Zadok spurred their horses to a trot.
Aghast, Barak called to the men outside their tents. “Stop them!”
Several men sprang before the horses. Even as they did, Devora unsheathed Mishpat and held the blade ready at her side, where it shone in the starlight like an invitation to death. Clean and white and unanswerable as an act of God. Barak gasped, for the blade was clearly iron, not bronze. Once only in his life had Barak ben Abinoam seen with his own eyes an implement of iron; the heathen champion who’d led the coastal raid Barak had repelled years ago had carried such a blade, and it had cut through the bronze shields of Barak’s men as easily as if Barak were defending his vineyard and theirs with only sticks of wood—as though a heathen not-god lived within the metal, thirsting with the need to sever and kill.
Whether at the sword or the oncoming of the horses or the fury naked in the navi’s eyes, the men fell back. The navi and the nazarite sent their horses into a brisk canter. In a moment they were gone from the camp, riding out toward the shore.
“Damn it!” Barak yelled. “Omri, Laban!” The war leaders were already near, drawn by the shouts and the hoofbeats, and they ran toward him. “You each gather up ten men, your best. Follow me!” Barak shouted the words as he ran for his own horse. As he saddled Ager and then leapt astride, his heart pounded fiercely. Women and God always brought trouble to a man’s house. This woman and her God more than most. “Ya!” he roared, wresting Ager’s head up and digging in his knees.
THE SILENT TOWN
DEVORA AND Zadok had a good start, and Barak didn’t catch up to them until their steeds had carried them into the town, past the settlement’s cistern and up a long street between two-story houses of cedar and fir. No voices called out from the houses, either to greet or challenge these strangers in their town. Nor did Barak call out to the houses. The gaping holes of the upper-story windows opened on lightless rooms as dark as though God had never created light. That kind of dark.
Fears rose in Barak’s mind that he hadn’t shivered under since he was a small boy—when he’d cry out for his mother, and her soft words would drive away the unclean, lurching things with which his imagination had peopled the night. His mother was not here now. And the irremediable dark within these deserted houses might conceal anything. Bodies, whether still or in motion. Bodies rising from the floor, mouths open and hungering, silently approaching, arms outreached to grab at him. His blood was loud in his ears, loud and demanding as God’s voice at Har Sinai. It took everything in him not to turn his horse and bolt from this strange town.
But there was no scent of death. Just stillness.
There was no sound of hooves behind him; the other men he’d called for were no doubt riding to catch up but hadn’t yet reached the settlement. He glanced down at his saddlebag. There was a curved bulge where he’d packed the shofar he carried. If he needed it. He made the sign against evil quickly with his left hand. He had lost the Ark; he intended to keep at least the navi.
Barak caught up with her, his horse wheezing, even as Devora slid from her own steed’s back where she and Zadok had halted outside a tumbled ruin of rafters and soot. One of those houses of cedar—a very great one—had burned to the ground; heaps of charred wood rose from the ashes the way lost kin rise from the mists in our dreams, fragments of our past demanding attention. There was no smoke rising from the cinders and no glow of embers—the fire must have been out a few days—but the scent of burned wood remained thick in the air.
Barak pulled Ager up before the ruin, a few steps from Devora. “What are you doing?” he whispered fiercely, glaring down at the navi, ignoring the tall nazarite who stood by her. “There could be dead here.”
“There most likely are.”
“Then what are you doing here, navi, without more men?”
Devora glanced at him, her eyes still dark with anger.
Zadok’s voice was a cold challenge in the dark. “If the navi says there is something we must see here, then there is something we must see.”
Devora glanced at the nazarite. “Even if there wasn’t,” she said quietly, “we must find an herbalist, or her supplies. For the girl.”
Barak gave the Canaanite an uneasy glance. The girl was gazing about, frowning as though looking for something she might recognize. Her eyes were a little glazed, and she was very pale. With a start, Barak reali
zed she was ill with fever.
“That girl,” he said hoarsely. “Is she—”
“It’s not that kind of fever,” Devora said. “But she has touched the dead.” With her gaze fixed on the charred ruin before them, the navi unstrapped a waterskin from the side of the saddle and handed it up to the girl. The Canaanite took the skin and held it, but didn’t drink.
“Wait for my men,” Barak said.
“Are you afraid, Barak?” An edge to the navi’s voice.
He didn’t know how to answer that. Admit his fear to a woman? He turned his head and spat on the hard-packed dirt of the street.
“So am I,” the navi said. “Let’s take a look.” For a moment the navi turned her attention to her horse. The gelding’s eyes were showing their whites, and Devora scratched under his chin a moment. The gelding whickered softly, but his eyes stayed round with fear. Leaning in, Devora whispered in the horse’s ear. Then she stepped away from her horse, with Mishpat unsheathed at her side.
“Zadok, watch over the girl, please.”
“Your will, navi.”
Devora left her horse, and the nazarite sat his with an uneasy look that Barak could well understand. As the navi walked slowly to the ruin, Barak looked at the charred timbers, then his gaze darted to the houses at either side, which were solid and intact. Only one house had burned. There must have been no wind. Still, a fire in an encampment or a town was a furious thing; there must have been men here to put the fire out before it devoured the other homes. But how had they salvaged nothing of this one house yet kept it from the others? It was as though this one house had been struck by a firebolt of divine judgment from the sky, or as though the people had stood about it with water and blankets, keeping the fire contained. Watching it burn. It made no sense. Nothing about this town made any sense. He had been here before, twice, years ago. Once when he met Hadassah as she drew water from the town’s cistern, once when he came to speak with the town’s elders at the gate, during the worst raids from the Sea People. It had been a grim settlement but a thriving one. Now these silent houses—it was as though the settlement he knew had never existed. Or as though he were no longer even walking in the waking world—as though somehow he had ridden Ager right into the dream country. He shivered.
