Covenant of War

by Cliff Graham

  Benaiah sat up, looked quickly at the tent and the hillside beyond it, saw no other attackers, and finally pulled out the weapon he preferred for these types of fights — in his right hand, a hardwood war club with a stone fixed at the tip, and in his left, a small iron-studded shield. It was light and could be wielded by his powerful arm for a lengthy amount of time, and in close quarters he did not risk cutting himself. It also made death very agonizing for his opponent.

  “We need to assault our way out of this,” Benaiah said, wiping sweat out of his eyes. “If we just escape they’ll run us down. They’ll have fresh water and we don’t.”

  “Hit the tent first. We need to conserve arrows, so give me clear shots,” Keth said, his arms a blur as he fixed another arrow. “They can’t be very experienced or they would have waited until we entered the tent. One of them got anxious.”

  Benaiah nodded. He allowed himself a few seconds to think about it. They wouldn’t be able to see him if he came at them from the side, buried as they were inside the dark interior and unwilling to step outside in the face of Keth’s arrows. But they would probably try to escape and attack out of the side openings.

  “I’m going to wait for them to slip out the side of the tent. When I draw them out and you have a shot, hit them.”

  “Why can’t I attack the other side?”

  “If we’re both fighting we won’t be able to see if more of them arrive. I need your eyes here.”

  Keth nodded. “Yahweh be with you, my friend.”

  Benaiah rolled to his side and sprinted forward while Keth shot another arrow toward the ravine. Benaiah felt a Philistine arrow whistle past his head from the tent opening. After a few more strides he knew he was out of the angle of fire for the archers in the tent. Crouching behind his shield as he ran, searching for any sign of other assaults, Benaiah reached the edge of the main tent.

  He hurdled a rope fastened to a tent stake and crouched on the side of the tent, waiting, his shield in his left hand, club in his right.

  As expected, a tent flap was briskly pushed open. Benaiah swung the club toward the arm holding the flap open. Bone snapped, and as the Philistine screamed in agony, Benaiah’s club crushed the man’s throat.

  Benaiah darted along the side of the tent toward the rear, the pain from the arrowhead in his chest agonizing. He decided not to rush inside because his eyesight would not adjust to the dark interior fast enough.

  Keth called out “Shot!” — a warning to him that an arrow was in flight and to watch out for it. Reaching the backside of the tent, Benaiah saw just in time another man peering through another flap.

  He swung the club and it crashed against an unseen helmet. The man cried out. Benaiah swung another hard strike.

  He spun on his heels, running back the way he had come. As he turned the corner, the first flap was opening again.

  Benaiah lowered his shoulder and ran into the body on the other side of it. They fell through the flap together into the dark interior of the tent. Benaiah drove his elbow into the throat of the man.

  Something smacked against his leg. Benaiah whirled. Darkness. He had to get back outside where he could see. A shout. The arrow tip in his chest burned like a coal.

  There!

  A Philistine was swinging at him. Benaiah avoided the swing and dove back outside the tent. The Philistine chased him outside. Benaiah was just about to turn and face him when he heard an arrow thump into flesh. He stopped running and spun.

  The Philistine chasing him, now on his knees, groped at the arrow shaft protruding from his torso. He glared at Benaiah, cursing in the Philistine tongue. Keth came running. “Have you seen any more?” Benaiah asked.

  “No, these were all I saw.”

  Benaiah knelt next to the Philistine and locked eyes with him.

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Many. We are coming to put our seed in your women and kill all of your men.”

  “Invasion?”

  The Philistine spat out blood and looked back and forth between Keth and Benaiah. “Your wives will become screaming whores, and Baal will rub your god’s face in his —”

  Benaiah punched him as hard as he could, relishing the crunch of several bones. The man fell onto his back.

  “Once more, then I break the other side of your face.”

  The Philistine was holding the arrow shaft with one hand and pawing at his face with the other. Benaiah let him curse a moment, then nudged him again.

  The Philistine lowered his hand and glared at him … then, unexpectedly, a grin.

  “More are coming than the waves of the sea, more than the sand of the Negeb. Your new king has become lazy, his army is scattered, we will —” He suddenly reached into his waist belt, withdrew a dagger, and slashed at Benaiah. Benaiah, reacting from instinct, caught his wrist and drove the dagger back into the Philistine’s neck.

  Benaiah watched him bleed until he was dead. Then he stood up.

  “Are you all right?” Keth asked.

  “Sore, nothing bad. Not very deep. We need to move.”

  Keth nodded. “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

  “It’s wise to assume so. Made the mistake of doubting the Amalekite about Ziklag.”

  “Why this small group?”

  “They must have been expecting emissaries and politicians from David’s court, not warriors, else they would have had more men on our flanks. Maybe they thought we would go into the tent unaware,” Benaiah said.

  “But where are the rest of the men around here? Surely a warlord would not have simply packed them up and left all of his women and children,” said Keth.

  “We could ask the women here where their men went.”

  “They knew who we were and that we were coming.”

  “The warlord might have sold his allegiance to Philistia in exchange for peace. He would not strike his fellow Hebrews himself, but he might have been persuaded to turn a blind eye.”

  “I’m not a Hebrew, but that does not seem possible. They hate Philistines the same as us. Perhaps they were lured away by a larger Philistine force, and while they were gone these assassins snuck in,” said Keth.

  Benaiah nodded, wiping sweat from his eyes. “Better get back to David,” he said.

  “I will retrieve my arrows.”

  Benaiah trotted to the side of the tent where he had left his shield. Keth ran to the fallen archers and pulled fresh arrows out of their quivers; he did not have time to inspect his own and they would likely be broken anyway.

  Benaiah and Keth trotted away from the tent in the direction of the nearest hillside, wanting to get out of sight as quickly as possible. Other tents in the village were showing signs of life. When Keth and Benaiah had been ambushed, all of the Hebrew women and children in the tent village had disappeared. Now, a few women looked out from under tent flaps with children hovering underneath them in the opening.

  Several men emerged from the tent village and watched them. Keth held his bow higher, showing them his warning. Benaiah reached up and pulled out the javelin Keth was carrying and waved it menacingly, along with his club. Only the most elite warriors carried multiple weapons, and from the looks on the faces of the men, this was sufficient deterrent.

  As they moved out of the area, Benaiah could not help but be angry with these Hebrews. Were they now in league with the heathen Philistines? Had it become so wretched in their lands that his own kinsmen were willingly submitting to their enemies?

  As they were about to crest the ridge, Benaiah heard the yelling of several men behind him. Tense, he stole a glance backward, but to his shock, the people were cheering them on.

  Lines of Hebrews, mostly women but a few men as well, emerged from the shadows and were whistling and yelling at them. Women spun in circles, the men tossed dust into the air and called out blessings. Children picked up rocks and threw them at the dead bodies of the Philistine soldiers.

  Confused, Benaiah and Keth stopped running.

  �
��Maybe they weren’t allied with them after all. They might have been under threat from the larger force to keep quiet,” Keth said.

  “Then where are their warriors? I see only older men and boys.”

  “Probably lured away, like you said.”

  The people in the warlord’s clan started chanting. The sound reached Benaiah’s ears.

  “Giborrim! Giborrim! Giborrim!”

  Benaiah grinned in spite of himself. They knew who they were.

  Giborrim.

  Mighty Men.

  Waving, the two warriors disappeared over the ridge.

  ELEVEN

  In the council room at David’s palace in Hebron, Eleazar son of Dodai was doing his best to hold his tongue.

  He listened, twitching when the remarks irritated him, unable to hide behind a stoic face, as Josheb and Shammah could. His feet were tucked under his legs. He, like the other warriors, sat on a dull rug that had become brown with the dirt clinging to the cloaks and tunics of the fighting men who always rested on it during councils such as these. They always refused clean rugs; only the campaign rugs that traveled with them on the frontier were acceptable.

  Across from him in the room, well lit from the high windows in the walls, David himself reclined on a clean rug with a bowl of figs. Eleazar glanced at him occasionally during the meeting. During the winter season, stuck inside the palace, David had allowed his perfectly toned and muscular figure to become soft. His auburn hair and beard were well groomed, but his eyes were strained, his features displaying stress and weariness beyond his years. His words were dull when he spoke, lacking their usual poetry and passion. To Eleazar, it appeared that David was simply existing and nothing more, unable to decide whether he wanted to be alert and engaged or aloof and lazy. Eleazar held in a sigh as another commander gave his lengthy description of what his own spies were telling him about the movements of foreign armies. There was an endless stream of them, all maneuvering themselves into the favor of the new king, all with their sights set on acquiring ample holdings of the newly acquired northern kingdom.

  Listening to the man ramble on, Eleazar looked over at the royal historian busily transcribing the notes from the council chamber. The historians and scribes had had much to write about recently. In the past weeks, several events had taken place that led to this meeting of the commanders and elders of Israel.

  The war between the tribes was over. Abner had finally decided that David was the future of Israel and intended to turn over the northern kingdom to him, ripping it away from Saul’s heir and the current king, Ishbosheth, a weak puppet. David demanded that, as a sign of good faith, Abner bring along Saul’s daughter Michal, to whom David had once been married. Abner had fulfilled his end of the arrangement, and it looked like there might be a peaceable transfer of power. Perhaps Abner had finally realized that David was the only way Israel could be unified. On the other hand, one rumor said that Abner had taken one of Ishbosheth’s concubines and laid claim to the throne himself. But Eleazar doubted that rumor. Why would Abner then turn it over to David?

  Regardless, the truth would never be known. Joab and Abishai had seen to that. Eleazar exhaled, fighting the sorrow rising up in his spirit. Such a good man. Such a waste.

  Eleazar looked away from the historian. The man speaking to the council now was the newly appointed general and liaison of the conscripts from the northern tribes, and he looked untrustworthy in every way. His charm was ample, as were his words. He had earned renown on the battlefield under Abner and was the one appointed in his place to negotiate the structure of the new Israelite standing army, but like other war leaders, his vain ambition was limitless. Eleazar hoped that David saw through such men, but life in the royal court might have softened him up to those with sweet words of admiration.

  “Majesty, the army of the people must be divided into two distinct corps,” the general, named Korah, continued. “If we integrate the men from the north too quickly, the officers will lose control. Men will fight over who insulted who and who looked at who’s woman — all of it.”

  “Your argument is valid, but they will never integrate at all if we keep them entirely separate,” David said.

  “But the Israelites will not want to be a part of Judah’s forces for many months, perhaps not until the next campaign season.”

  “We are all Israelites. The circumcised sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There is Judah and Simeon and Ephraim — but there is also Israel, and Israel is all of us now. When the Philistines and the Arameans and everyone else who wishes to destroy us are defeated, then we can get back to squabbling over who can farm on what hill.”

  Now everyone, northerner and southerner, chuckled in disbelief. Saul had tried to create one nation out of all the tribes, but a long history of infighting was against him. It was also against David.

  “Laugh now, but you will see. We shall all be one people soon.”

  “Lord, I know you mean well —”

  “I do mean well. Just as Abner meant well.” The council went quiet at this. David looked around. “I grieve him. I do. As much as any of you. How I wish he would be here for this. But he is gone, and now you must follow me. We have many common enemies.”

  David’s tone was diplomatic, and Korah nodded and sat down. Eleazar looked for signs of the man’s displeasure. It had not gone the way Korah had planned — he had no doubt hoped to be appointed chief of a powerful, independent, and ethnically united group that could rebel at any time.

  Eleazar shifted visibly again. David smiled at him and said, “Eleazar, bring your wisdom to the group.”

  Eleazar leaped up almost before David was finished. “We need to keep it as you have designed it, lord.” He picked up the staff that served as their pointer and aimed the tip at a cluster of large squares drawn into the box of sand in the middle of the group.

  “The army of the people needs to be fully integrated with men of all tribes from the beginning and given their own identity. Make them form a new history. Let them create their own standards and set up competitions between them for the right to boast. Let the best warriors from each unit spar and be given prime places on battlefields so that they can win renown for their units. They will bond quickly. We can even have athletic competitions like the merchants describe from their travels.”

  “You can’t remove generations of hate with a foot race, Eleazar,” Korah scoffed.

  “You certainly can’t if you are serving as a Philistine slave and your wives and daughters are being whored out to a barracks of soldiers. We do not have the luxury of keeping all of the men isolated into their own groups. What if you have a traitor in your officer ranks? He could turn the tide of battle with a single defection.”

  Korah visibly bristled at the insult. “What about my lord the king’s personal army? You have them divided between men of Israel and foreigners.”

  “You said the difference yourself. Foreigners. We are all descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob here. It is one thing to separate foreign mercenaries and another to separate our own kin.”

  “Let’s ask the foreigners what they think of this,” David said. He gestured toward another corner of the room. A fearsome man with thick braids of black hair and straps of iron-linked armor stood up and bowed low. His name was Makat, and he served in Benaiah’s bodyguard.

  “We serve you, lord king. Whether you are a Philistine or a Hebrew.”

  David nodded at him and the man bowed. Eleazar saw that this must have been an uncomfortable piece of information for the elders gathered from the northern tribes, and they shifted uneasily.

  “Eleazar, Josheb, and Shammah stay behind. The rest of you are dismissed, we will continue after the midday meal,” David said.

  As men murmured and bustled out of the room, Eleazar sat back down on his rug. He felt as though he could continue pacing for hours, the restless energy in his body never finding enough outlets to satisfy him. He was a man who thought quickly, acted quickly, lived quickly. Such endless coun
cils and meetings vexed him. He knew their purpose, but his place was outside among the troops. Life in Hebron at the royal court had been hard on him these past years.

  He looked at David again and tried not to be disappointed by what he was seeing the king become. So many days spent in the court, so many women coming and going from the harem. David was plagued by endless headaches from his numerous wives, all chattering and competing for primacy in his chamber, each eyeing their own child to be the successor when the day eventually came that the Lion could no longer rule. It was sad to Eleazar that a man still so young, only thirty years, already had to worry about his own death and succession. David had been king over Judah for seven years, but only days into his reign over the whole kingdom, the trappings of rule were already weakening him.

  We need to get him back out on the frontier, Eleazar thought. Out in the wild, where the desert and the enemy’s arrows would sharpen him once more.

  The door shut. Now only the Three and their king were left in the council chamber. The light from the window dimmed momentarily as a cloud passed outside. It seemed to rouse David from his trance. He stood and stretched his legs. He wore a royal robe with fine linen and expensive dyes of purple, but now that he was alone with the Three, he pulled it from around his shoulders, exposing a simple tunic and leather weapon belt. He carried a dagger with him at all hours — even, it was rumored, in his bedchamber when the women came to him. Women made dangerous assassins, and everyone knew of the king’s amorous passions. But despite his nightly visitor from the harem, David was especially harsh to women. He spoke to them even more dismissively than other Israelite men and often ordered them out of his bed the moment he was through with them.

  But of course, this could all be the silly scuttlebutt of women that frequently wasted everyone’s time. Eleazar’s wife had been whispering these things in his ear, but Eleazar had been quick to dismiss them. He did not know. All he knew was that the sooner they marched out against their enemies, the better for everyone.