Covenant of War

by Cliff Graham

  Such intrigues were above and beyond the boy, though. It was his fate to languish in the heat and misery of muddy sheep pools. Part of him thought he would never have to encounter the war. That was the business of warriors and kings, and he was neither.

  The boy swatted at a fly. What did he care? All he knew was that the day was very hot. Flies crowded around his ears, trying to force their way in. The sheep, twenty-five of them, the prize of his father’s flock he was told, mewed and bawled in misery as they picked their way toward the water. The flies were relentless. The boy rubbed his face. He shouted at the sheep to keep moving, swatting the hind leg of the nearest with the tip of his staff. The sheep bleated at him. Irritated, he swatted it once more.

  He was getting tired of the heat and the sheep and the flies — and the endless arguments about which king would be better. Something would need to change soon. The boy leaned his staff against a sycamore and sprawled in the tree’s shade. His legs ached. He rubbed them a few times.

  The pool was several cubits deep at its center and fed by a trickle of water from a spring deep in the mountain canyons. Two cliffs surrounded it, casting shadows over the muddy water most hours of the day. Since millennia before the young shepherd was born, it had served as a crossroads for the nomadic wanderers in the great deserts of the east. As the only strategic water point in the region to support the livestock of an army, it had been contested in ages gone by. But now, the pool sat in silent peace at the base of the cliffs, the only sound usually being the trickle of water down the stones and into the basin.

  Nearby, just out of sight, was the village of Detheren. A day’s walk beyond that, near the sea, was Dor and its fortress. The same mountain spring that fed this desert pool also rolled through the ravines into those towns and filled their pools.

  He froze. Very close to him, only cubits away, a cobra raised its head.

  The snake held still for a moment, tongue slipping in and out of its mouth. Dust rose. The sound of bleating grew louder. The serpent bobbed its head slightly.

  The boy rolled away instantly. The snake lashed out for him, missing. The boy dropped a stone in his sling and snapped it around once before releasing.

  The snake’s head burst open in a spray of crimson, showering the dull rocks nearby with a coating of bright blood. The body coiled and snapped. It thrashed in circles, spraying blood from the stump where its head had been. The sheep bawled, scampering over one another to flee.

  The shepherd boy, who had seen the deadly thing lying still in the sand, held it up on the end of his staff. He looked closely at the crushed head. Amber liquid draining from the head mingled with the blood coursing out. It was the poison that had felled so many of his father’s sheep. It would have felled him this day had he not seen the scaly hide.

  He tossed it aside in disgust, shaken. Serpents were cursed and unclean. The lazy afternoon heat had made him careless and he had nearly paid with his life. He looked over the herd. The sheep were still bleating and jostling one another with great anxiety, but they did not appear to be on the verge of scattering. He was grateful. This day had been eventful enough without having to chase them all back into the corner of the cliff.

  The sheep calming down, the sun warming the rocks, and the haze of the pool conspired to make him drowsy again, and before long his eyes began to droop and his shoulders sagged. The staff propped in the crook of his arm slid down and he dropped his sling.

  A hand touched his shoulder, and he started violently.

  “What have you seen since you have been here?”

  The boy looked up, trembling. A large man stood over him.

  “N – nothing.”

  His lips parted to speak again but no words came out. He felt foolish and scared.

  The large man’s face was dirty and calloused, with a short, well-trimmed beard. He had a noble demeanor, as one who had been under authority and who held it now. He was a warrior, judging by the weapons he carried.

  What caught the boy’s attention even more than the warrior’s size and weapons was the tangled mess of scars that covered his neck and top of his head, visible even through thick black hair. There were also scars on the warrior’s arm above the leather greaves — vicious, disfiguring scars, like what a desert demon would have — raised, jagged mounds of light flesh on dark flesh.

  Next to the large, scarred warrior was a foreigner — the boy could tell by the man’s dress and skin tone, much lighter than Hebrews’. His long hair was braided. Both had similar armor and weaponry, but the foreigner also carried a bow. They appeared to have been out on the frontier for a long time. Their fierce eyes made him lower his.

  “Where are your brothers?” the first man said.

  “The younger work for my father. The elder are away. War,” was all the boy could reply.

  “What tribe is your father?”

  Now the boy was worried. If these men were from the south and the lands of Judah, he was in great danger of losing his father’s flock, even though his family was sympathetic to David. Hebrews had been fighting for generations amongst themselves, sometimes treating fellow tribes worse than even the Philistines.

  The foreign warrior must have sensed that the boy was afraid of the question, so he said, “That was good aim on that cobra. You sling like you’ve done it more than your years.”

  “My brothers fight with the Lion of Judah,” the boy said. “They sling for his army. They taught me well.” He was suddenly afraid that he had given away too much in his outburst of pride.

  The scarred one lowered his head. “Their names?”

  “Shethra and Bothra, sons of Banaa. My grandfather has disowned them, but my father is proud.

  “Makes sense. You come by your lazy ways naturally. They sleep all the time like you do.”

  “You weren’t laughing when they saved you at the boundary,” said the foreigner.

  The scarred man frowned. “Well, everyone hits something once in a while,” he said, then winked at the shepherd boy.

  These were the Lion’s men? Men who fought with his two oldest brothers? Shethra and Bothra were the only ones he did not know well, for they had left his father’s home when he was young because they were deeply in debt. They found the man David in a cave, and he gave them a place in his army. Only in recent years had he seen them, since their lord allowed only brief liberty from his armies, but in the time the boy had had with them, they’d told him stories of slaughtering Amalekites and battling Philistines, and he listened wide-eyed to them, taking their instructions with the sling as though it was the Law of Yahweh.

  The boy wanted to ask these men many questions. Questions about the war against the north, about his brothers — but most of all, he wanted to hear about the Lion himself. His legend had grown. The Lion and his Mighty Men. The Three and their slain thousands, Benaiah and his battles with beasts, captures of hidden fortresses and witches. He suddenly wanted to hear all of it. These were David’s men! How the other boys would be jealous of him when they heard who he’d seen this day!

  “It’s not all that, boy,” said the one with the scars, as though reading his thoughts. The boy could not hold back his words.

  “Is it true that Benaiah son of Jehoiada fought fifty lions in a pit with only his hands? Did he kill an army of Egyptian giants and was given ten women as a prize?”

  The foreign warrior smiled broadly. “You want to answer that one? Seems it is up to fifty.”

  The scarred one scowled. The foreigner chuckled again.

  Unable to stop himself, the shepherd boy asked, “Does the Lion of Judah really call down fire from Yahweh upon his enemies?”

  “Haven’t seen that yet, but I’m sure he could do it. Probably with a song,” said the scarred one. “Did you see any Philistines recently? Any other foreign filth wandering around?”

  The boy nodded. “A troop of thirty-four yesterday. Light weapons. They were heading in the direction of the coast, across those hills.”

  “You have a t
rained eye.”

  “Like I said, my brothers.”

  “We should keep moving. I will tell your brothers when I see them that their little cub slings like a man now.” The foreigner winked at the boy and started to leave.

  The scarred one nodded. He grabbed the boy by the chin and tugged him playfully.

  “Keep up your slinging and grow your beard. You can have a place among the Mighty Men one day with those skills. Might even put you in the bodyguard.”

  As the two of them walked away, the boy called out, “I will! Mention me to Benaiah!”

  The scarred one said over his shoulder, “It was only two lions. One was in the pit. But that was enough, trust me.”

  He watched them disappear around a bend. He reluctantly went back to the tedium of watching the sheep, ecstatic over his encounter with them. No one would believe him — none of his friends, none of the girls he wanted to impress. His thoughts drifted to the scarred warrior, and he wondered what had caused those scars.

  And he finally realized who it had been.

  TEN

  The tent of meeting was in a desolate place.

  Benaiah, noticing from the look on his closest friend’s face that he felt the same, rolled his head in a circle to loosen the muscles in his neck. They had been traveling for several days and were feeling the effects of marching again. But they loved it. In recent years they had been spending less time on the march and more days in Hebron. They trained hard and frequently, but life in cities softened their backs and legs. Both wished for campfires and sleeping among stones, exposed to the frigid night wind of the desert and the comforting depths of the stars. This mission met that need.

  Moving in obscurity was impossible in the towns. Everyone knew who Benaiah was by reputation, and although very few of the Israelite people had seen his face, it would not have taken them long to deduce who he was: Benaiah the Lion Killer, son of Jehoiada, chief of the guard that protected the King of Judah. His neck, the top of his head, and his hairline were covered with old scar tissue from when claws had torn through much of his scalp. Though leather greaves covered up most of his arms, scars were visible there as well.

  Benaiah did not revel in such notoriety. He had a quiet manner, and although he was not averse to laughing hard when the occasion merited it, he preferred to keep to himself and his closest friends. He knew people trod cautiously around him, and while he did not wish to be avoided out of fear, he had to admit he liked the peace of being left alone. There were only a handful of people he felt comfortable around — the warriors he lived and fought with, including the man walking next to him.

  Keth, or Uriah, as he had come to be known since David had bestowed the name, was a mercenary from the Hittite lands of the north. He had come to their camp seven years previously, just in time for them to discover that their town had been raided and destroyed by Amalekite soldiers.

  Keth had proven himself during the resulting battle to reclaim their families from the raiders, working furiously to keep their brittle weapons replaced and their water resupplied. In a successful new strategy, they had designated special armorers to run new weapons to the lines as warriors lost them or they shattered. It had demonstrated to David that he had commanders who could think on their feet, and Keth was foremost among them.

  Hittites knew how to forge iron, and Keth had been appointed to lead the new company of armorers. David’s goal was for all of his weapons to be produced in his own ranks, using the new iron-forging methods. David no longer wanted to rely upon the weapons captured from Philistines, and with Keth’s help, most of his troops now had the coveted weapons.

  David had given his bodyguard and chief armorer this mission: to meet secretly in the eastern and northern lands with tribal elders to see where they stood. The nomadic groups were a mixture of the tribes of Manasseh, Zebulun, Asher, and Naphtali. Despite the ancient allegiances, times were different than when the land had first been settled. Many clans were breaking off and living in the best manner they could, away from the wars in the heart of the country.

  These missions had occurred often since the beginning of the tribal war. The information provided by these tribes was almost as reliable as the Issachar tribal scouts in David’s army. Any shifting of political alliances or invasions of their lands would first be known by the nomadic warlords on the frontier. Benaiah believed that was a legitimate reason for meeting with them, but he also suspected that David simply liked them. He had been one of them, after all.

  It was important to send envoys to the tribal warlords to offer them payment for military commitments and service. It would benefit them all in the long view, since the land they would be conscripted to defend would be given to them as payment for their efforts, and any man fighting on his own land is a fearsome opponent.

  Benaiah and Keth had set out on this mission after Abner had arrived to inform David that he was turning over the northern army. The tribal war was finally over. Benaiah thought it would finally give him time to devote to his wife, Sherizah, as he had been promising. There was talk of a unity banquet to heal old wounds. He imagined that he could be with Sherizah there.

  But it was not to be. David had pulled him and Keth aside and dispatched them to the northern borderlands with the news. The warlords would be needed to keep Abner honest about his commitment. And so once more, Benaiah had held his wife close their last night together, whispered more hollow promises that this would be the last time he would need to leave for a long while, and slipped out into the darkness.

  As they approached the ragged goatskin-tent camp, Benaiah’s eyes flicked back and forth continuously. This was the last desert warlord they would visit on this mission. Benaiah and Keth were alone, demonstrating the purity of their intent, assuming that any treachery that might befall them would come from a rogue.

  “Do you think there are other Philistines around besides the troop the boy mentioned?” Keth asked.

  “I haven’t seen any sign. But possible.”

  “Hope they haven’t been here before us.”

  The desert warlords and their tent camps were a small part of the Israelite population, but they were important. They rigorously trained their young men in combat discipline to fend off nomadic raiders like the Amalekites in the south or Syrian bandits in the north.

  What was most important to them was their livestock and their water; anything that threatened either was violently resisted. Unlike other warlords, they did not care about hoarding vast wealth or obtaining tracts of land. Such wealth would have been meaningless to them. Better to have a hundred head of cattle, fertile women, and a deep well than a bag of gold. They would have been a useful ally to the dead king Saul if he had stopped hunting David long enough to cultivate a relationship with them.

  They passed a line of tents and corrals, forming a small village. There were few people around — mostly women and children. Just before they reached the tattered flap that served as the entrance to the largest tent, which they assumed would be the council tent, Keth stopped. Benaiah turned to ask what was wrong, but Keth held up his hand.

  “They would have come out to us before now.”

  Benaiah felt his heart flutter, a sign of danger. Keth was right. Their fatigue from the long march had dulled their judgment.

  Keth stared at the tent flap hard. Benaiah, sharply alert now, searched the desolate surroundings nearby. The other tents of the warlord’s clan were a short distance away. Camels bayed their guttural noises, dogs yapped occasionally.

  Visitors to these camps were normally a great event worthy of everyone’s attention, for good or ill. The desert breeze stirred up swirls of dust and sand. Nothing seemed terribly amiss. All looked normal. Yet Keth did not move.

  “We should go,” he said quietly.

  Benaiah nodded. If Keth said it was not right, then it was not right. Benaiah started to turn away, reaching over his back to secure the strap he had begun to shrug off his shoulder in anticipation of dropping his weapons outside the
tent. As he did, an arrow whistled through the air and slammed into his chest. He pitched backward from the force and thudded into the sand.

  Keth did not hesitate. He threw the javelin he had been carrying. It sailed through the opening of the tent.

  Benaiah gasped for breath, convinced that he had only moments to live. He snapped the shaft protruding from his chest. Pain finally registered, severe enough that he yelped like a wounded animal.

  “Philistines,” Keth grunted, grabbing Benaiah by the collar and dragging him across the sand. Benaiah lurched to his side and shoved Keth’s hand away. He prodded the arrow a moment; it had not gone deep into his flesh, slowed by the leather armor before striking his collar bone, but the hooked barbs were excruciating.

  “I’m good,” Benaiah coughed. The two warriors crouched behind a boulder just as another flurry of arrows thumped around them. Benaiah counted the number of arrow strikes as Keth readied his own bow.

  “Three archers. From the tent. They’re shooting together,” Keth said.

  “Why are they attacking us? They’re supposed to be our allies!”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Can you tell how many?”

  “No.”

  “Flank?”

  Benaiah glanced to his right, then his left, then watched as a helmet emerged from the narrow ravine between the tents that served as a waste dump. Another helmet popped up next to it, and two soldiers rushed across the sand toward them.

  “Left flank! Two!”

  Keth fixed the arrow, spun, and fired it in the same motion. The iron head pierced the leg of the closest man, who tripped and fell, screaming. His partner in the ambush, not expecting the warriors to be carrying a bow as well as heavy weaponry, leaped back into the ditch.

  Benaiah, angry about the arrow in his chest and angry at himself for missing the warning signs of the ambush, frantically searched for other assaults. Keth shot another arrow into the tent and at the waste ditch to hold whoever else was in there at bay.