A Light on the Hill

by Connilyn Cossette

  With a grunt, Darek knocked Rossim on the side of his head with the butt of his sword. The older man swung his dagger, slicing a new wound into Darek’s arm, but Darek, younger and faster, whipped around and plunged his sword into the older man’s ribs. Rossim stumbled backward, clutching the wound and crumpling.

  Shocked at the swift outcome, my attention swung back to Yuval, who was doing his best to fight off the other Canaanite but seemed to be losing badly. Darek rushed past me and shouldered the enemy with a violent shove, pushing him away from Yuval and slamming the man into the trunk of a tree. Bark flew out from the blow, and the Canaanite screamed a curse and a threat to violate me, but the bloodcurdling words were cut off with a swift blow to the man’s jaw by Darek’s fist. The Canaanite’s head jerked back into the tree again, his eyes rolling back into his head.

  Thinking he would sag to the ground, unconscious, I released the breath I’d been holding, but the man grunted and moved to swing his sword at Darek. With a sidestep out of range, Darek arced his blade through the air and slit the man’s neck. With half-formed threats gurgling from his bloodied lips, the Canaanite fell face first onto the ground.

  Shaking, I turned away, hot tears wetting my veil. Although I’d just witnessed Darek protecting me in an impressive display of skill, all I could envision was that sword slicing my own throat next. Darek was not just any soldier. He was well-trained—deadly.

  “It’s all right, Moriyah.” Yuval’s arm slipped around my shoulders, pulling me to his chest. “They are gone.”

  I braved a look at Rossim’s body, his deadly weapons tossed to the side. Darek walked into my sight line, sword still drawn and gaze roving from one end of the clearing to the other, skimming the thick undergrowth around us with a practiced eye. He was still on the defensive, his ready posture announcing that he was not sure whether more Canaanites might spring from the trees at any moment. As well they might.

  “Do you think—?”

  Darek cut off Yuval’s half-question with a lifted palm. He cocked his head, listening to the breeze stroll through the pine needles and oak leaves. The three of us stood silent for a few minutes, none of us seeming to breathe until Darek’s stance softened. “I don’t think there are any more, but we should move, in case I am wrong.”

  After examining the bodies for useful supplies and swiping the blood off their weapons in the long grass, Darek handed Yuval the older one’s kopesh.

  Yuval said nothing as he examined the weapon, its embossed handle clearly designed by an Egyptian craftsman with great skill. After a brief glance at Darek, one that contained a bevy of questions, he secured the weapon’s exquisite leather scabbard to his braided wool belt, on the opposite hip from the short sword he’d carried from Shiloh.

  After flipping the younger Canaanite over, Darek rummaged around inside the man’s bloodied collar and then lifted a satchel that jingled with the tinny sound of metal pieces as he yanked the leather cord over the dead man’s head. “Looks like these two were bandits. Those weapons must have been lifted from a traveler.” He peered inside the bag, his eyes going wide. “Gold. And plenty of it.” He did the same to the older man and came up with an even larger treasure in a satchel tied at his waist.

  “Should we take such a thing?” asked Yuval. “When this has obviously been stolen?”

  Darek shrugged. “If we leave it here, it will do no one any good.”

  Yuval scratched his head, considering Darek’s point. “You are right. It’s probably best. Even if it seems a bit like thieving ourselves.”

  Darek lifted a sly grin. “Well, consider it restitution for that cut to your head there.”

  Yuval put his hand to his forehead, where a trickle of blood tracked from his temple to beard. Wiping it away, he grunted and then pointed to Darek’s arm. “They owe you a bit more than me.”

  Yuval was right. Darek had endured much more than a scratch—the Canaanite had slashed a long jagged wound across his forearm.

  “I’ll be fine.” He waved his other palm. “We need to move. I’ll deal with it later.”

  “At least wrap it,” I said, my tone a little more demanding than I’d meant for it to be. “Staunch the blood flow until we can find something to keep away infection.”

  The memory of our trek through the darkness to find salve for Rimona made a quick appearance in my head. To distract myself from the swell of confusing emotions it caused, I looked around for something to wrap his wound. The two Canaanites wouldn’t have any more use of their tunics, but the thought of using them felt wrong somehow.

  Sighing, I submitted to the best solution to present itself. After asking to borrow the obsidian dagger that had done the damage to Darek in the first place, I used it to saw at the tail end of my long headscarf, careful to ensure it stayed secure across my face, but leaving a mess of blue fringe in its wake. Then, doing my best to avoid brushing my fingers across his skin and acutely aware of each time I failed, I wrapped the scrap around his arm twice.

  I double-tied the fabric, wishing I could tighten the knot on my fraying emotions as well. “That should work for now.”

  “Thank you,” Darek said, and the sound of his voice so near sent a shiver of something intriguing, yet unsettling, across my shoulders.

  “Thank you, for . . .” I half glanced toward the bodies. “If you hadn’t have been here . . .”

  Darek shrugged, as if fending off vicious thieves were a normal occurrence, and instead turned to Yuval. “For someone seemingly so unused to wielding a sword, you did well.”

  Yuval brushed a bit of dust from his tunic, seeming abashed. “You noticed then.”

  True humor sparkled in Darek’s grin. “Considering you were gripping it with both hands and swinging it like a scythe . . . yes. I noticed.”

  CHAPTER

  Fifteen

  Darkening clouds lumbered across the wide valley, overshadowing jeweled green fields, splendid orchards that spread in every direction, and the small town that lay near the foot of the mountain in the distance.

  “We need to get around this mountain,” Darek said with a gesture toward the northeast. “This road crosses the one that ties Megiddo to Beit She’an.”

  “Those are enemy-held cities. Is there no other way?” said Yuval.

  “There is. Northwest toward Megiddo and then through the mountains, but it’s a treacherous road and those two we saw this morning are only a taste of what we might encounter among the Canaanites that inhabit this area. If we are discovered to be Hebrew, we would either be killed or taken to one of their cities to be sold as slaves.”

  After Jericho, I had no desire to step foot in another one of their cities, ever again. The darkness that characterized such places still made appearances in my most disturbing dreams.

  “Wherever we go,” Yuval said, “it looks as though we have rain headed our way. That storm is gaining speed.”

  Darek considered the clouds as well and then swiveled to look northeast, seemingly torn between the two alternatives. “We need to find shelter. Now.” In response to his warning, light buzzed across the sky in the distance, accompanied by a rumble of thunder. “Go!” he said, and we ran in the direction he pointed, toward the tall mountain that loomed higher and darker with every footfall. Rain began falling in a torrent as the storm overtook us.

  In the wake of another peal of thunder, Yuval called out, “Where can we go?”

  “We’ll take shelter under those trees.” Darek gestured up the hillside.

  “You want us to climb? In the rain?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Unless you’d like to go into Dotan and knock on a door, it’s the only option available to us.”

  With only a cursory glance back toward the Canaanite village, I pressed forward on the tiny hunting trail behind Darek. The longer the rain pelted down, the slicker the trail became. Rivulets of water began to wash down the side of the slope as we climbed, dragging mud and pebbles with them in their mad rush into the valley. Taking a peek backward, p
ast the edge of the borrowed mantle I’d pulled over my head, I took stock of how far we’d climbed and my heartbeat pattered nearly as fast as the raindrops. The drop-off next to the trail made my stomach wobble—one wrong move and I’d tumble to the rocks below. Perhaps a fitting end for a murderer.

  After a few more tentative steps upward, I slipped and fell forward onto my elbow, my foot slipping over the edge, along with a smattering of stones and the last of my courage. Water sheeted over my face like a river, washing away my futile tears, as my heart pounded a terrified cadence. I yanked my foot back to safety, grasping at a muddy tree root that had been exposed by the rain.

  “Moriyah!” Yuval called out as he caught up to me and gripped the back of my tunic, holding me steady as I worked to catch my breath.

  Darek had spun around at Yuval’s outburst. He skidded back down toward me on the sodden trail and put out a hand. I hesitated, remembering the awkwardness of touching him while tending his wound. I tightened my grip on my mantle, desperate to keep my face covered in spite of my sodden veil.

  “Let me help you.” His voice rose over the wind and rain. “Yuval is behind you. We won’t let you fall.”

  I put my hand in his, at once grateful for his strength and the tiny bit of warmth offered by his wet skin on mine, yet keenly aware that my divided emotions over Darek became even more fractured by the connection. He braided his fingers between mine, gripping me tightly as he pulled me back to standing and away from the edge.

  Head down, I followed as we continued climbing the trail toward the thick trees on the next ridge.

  “Look!” he called out. “A cave!”

  I followed his gesture to a dark slash in the side of the mountain. With renewed energy, I pushed myself harder as we made our way toward the large opening.

  “Stay here. I’ll make sure there are no animals inside.” Darek released me and my hand immediately went cold.

  Yuval and I stood side by side, dripping mantles outstretched above our heads as Darek approached the cave with caution. After disappearing inside, sword drawn, he emerged after a few moments and beckoned us to join him. “Looks like an animal den of some sort, but it’s empty.”

  The cave was shallow but wide and tall enough that the entirety of Ora’s little mud-brick home might fit inside. The smell of stale death haunted the space, but it was dry. By sparking a shard of flint he must have carried with him against his iron dagger, Darek built a fire with some brush he’d scavenged near the cave beneath a fallen tree. The damp brush smoked and sputtered. When the tinder finally lit, Darek blew on the sparks until the flames spread. He added some windblown dry leaves from a corner of the cave, building the fire bit by bit. The inviting warmth invited me to shuck off my mud-slicked sandals and my waterlogged cloak and inch nearer to the fire, eager to assuage the numbness from my wet body and the latent fear from nearly pitching over a cliff to my death.

  “Won’t someone see the fire up here?” I said, stretching my icy fingertips toward the flames.

  “We should be safe to leave it going for a while,” Darek said. “At least while the storm is still raging out there.”

  Yuval warmed his hands over the fire, scrubbing them together. “Where do we go from here?”

  “Once we reach the trade road, we follow the stream that flows down through the Jezreel Valley, which will lead us all the way down to the river. We can go far enough south of Beit She’an that no one should see us. There is plenty of thick forest between here and there. The most dangerous stretch might be from the ridge down into the river valley where there is little cover. But getting across that river is imperative. We’ll still be in Canaanite territory until we cross.”

  “How was your surveying team able to come through here without notice?” I asked. “You said you traveled the length and width of this whole land.”

  “We split up at times, in places where it was more dangerous. Then a few of us were sent out ahead to ensure the path was clear.”

  “You were a scout for the team?” asked Yuval.

  “I was.” That explained his fearlessness, quick reflexes with those thieves, and extraordinary skills with weapons. What kind of courage did it take to be the first to press into the unknown like that? Or was it recklessness that drove him?

  “When will Yehoshua send the armies to drive out the rest of the Canaanites?” I asked.

  He seemed surprised by my direct question. “Now that the land has been divided between the tribes, it will be their own responsibility to deal with the holdouts.”

  “Didn’t Mosheh say we were supposed to expel every Canaanite from the land?” I pressed.

  Darek shrugged. “We are, but apparently Yehoshua feels it is time for families to settle in the places we already hold. And for that we need men to build homes and tend farms. We aren’t quite ready yet to inhabit all the land anyhow. If we are spread too thin we might be easily overtaken. Besides, Yehoshua won’t be around forever. It is time for men of courage and valor to rise up among the sons of Yaakov.”

  “The tribes will have to chase the crows from their own vineyards,” added Yuval, “or the crop will be destroyed.” Yuval’s quiet statement conjured a bittersweet picture of Eitan and his bird-scattering stick in my mind.

  Was Ora making sure he was fed properly? Was my father ensuring he was safe? Had what had happened with the twins been explained to him? Was he devastated? Horrified?

  “Exactly,” Darek said, the word echoing off the back of the cave and cutting into my worries about Eitan. “I’m looking forward to it. The crows have had their claws in this land for far too long. The innocent blood they’ve shed here has gone unavenged long enough.”

  His flat statement erased the tentative safety I’d felt in his presence over the last few hours, and at the same time answered my question from before. It was not simply courage that drove Darek, although he seemed to fear little, and his actions were far from reckless—it was justice that compelled him to press into the unknown with such determination. He took seriously the mandate to clear the land of Avraham’s promise of those who had been warned for four hundred years—since Sodom and Gomorrah had been reduced to ashes—to turn from murder, idolatry, and other practices too disgusting to name.

  Darek had given no mercy to the enemies of our people and would offer none to the killer of his nephews . . . no matter what had happened between us during a walk through the vineyard on a moonlit night.

  CHAPTER

  Sixteen

  Rain sheeted in front of the cave entrance, blurring my view of the wide valley. My still-damp veil clung to my face as I sat cross-legged with my back to the remains of the fire. The storm seemed to be stalled above the mountain, ceaselessly unloading its burden over our shelter. Behind me, Yuval slept with his back against the wall in order to take the late watch in Darek’s place after night fell.

  Darek leaned against the entrance, surveying the gray-shrouded valley. “I hope this storm does not last through the night. We must be on our way early. We have a long walk tomorrow to Beit She’an, even though most of the way is downhill and along a small river. We’ll need to stay out of sight, so the going will be slow.”

  I looked up at him, curiosity outweighing my fears. “How do you remember such things? Know where we are and what is ahead?”

  He tapped his temple. “A map, remember?”

  “What is a map?”

  He looked at me for a moment, surprise in his expression. “A map is a drawing of the land.”

  Confused, I tilted my head. Darek had seen so much, done so much while I’d been trapped inside my home.

  “Look,” he approached and sat on the ground within a pace of me, and then smoothed the dirt between us. “This is the mountain.” He drew an oval with his finger. “This is where we are now,” he drew a small circle on the western side. Then with a slash he drew a straight line over the mountain and then turned right. “This is the road, and next to it . . .” He drew a squiggly line that meandered along next
to the road. At the end he drew a square. “Beit She’an,” he said. “The city is on a high hill that overlooks the Jordan River Valley.”

  “But how do you know where these things are in relation to one another?”

  He scratched his temple, contemplating. “It’s as if you are a bird, flying over the land and looking down on it and then drawing what you see beneath you on a piece of papyrus.”

  My lips rounded as I imagined what a bird would see along its path. Darek drew a few more shapes in the dirt. “This is Shiloh, which lays to the southeast of us. And this—” he formed a square into the earth—“this is Kedesh, where we are headed.”

  Considering the difference in distance between Shiloh and this mountain and the much farther distance to Kedesh, I leaned over to point at the left side of his dirt sketch. “What is over there?”

  “Megiddo,” he said, as he placed two crosswise slashes in its place. “A city that we attempted to take, but could not. It is, along with Beit She’an, one of the most powerful of the city-states left in this area and undergirded by support from Pharoah.”

  “Egypt still has power here?”

  “Yes, there is a road that travels south.” He made a long trail downward from his depiction of Megiddo. “It is well-worn by chariot wheels to and from Egypt, carrying tribute from the Canaanite vassal kings and returning supplies, soldiers, and weapons. These kings have been beneath the hand of Pharaoh since Egypt subdued their rebellion many, many years ago, before our grandparents left to follow Mosheh.”

  He added a few more details to his dirt map that I could not decipher before speaking again. “That village we saw, Dotan, is here.” He pointed to a smudge very near our mountain. “It was likely upon this very road that Yosef was taken all the way to Egypt and, ultimately, to his destiny as second in command to Pharaoh.”