Covenant of War

by Cliff Graham

  Finally, they got to their feet and embraced each other. Eleazar kissed Benaiah on the cheek, then clapped Keth on the side of the face.

  “Watch out for him, Hittite.”

  “I always do.”

  Gareb gently kicked the dozing soldier squarely in the back of the head.

  “Come on, wake up. It’s the last day of our lives, might as well end it like men.”

  The soldier scrambled away. Gareb had spent the better part of the night wandering among the troops, too anxious to sleep, walking from soldier to soldier, trying to encourage the green ones. He would not be marching with them but instead going with the Thirty to the Bethlehem road. He knew that many of these troops would not survive the day. It was never easy to say good-bye to them, no matter how many times he had done it in his life.

  The rest of the troops following David and Eleazar disappeared into the forest, making their way to the valley. Many mothers’ sons. Many fathers, he thought.

  Spotting Benaiah and the others at the edge of the forest, he trotted over, preparing to race northeast to battle a foe that would probably destroy them.

  Across the forest at the entrance of the valley, Ittai could not sleep. He rose from his mat to inspect his chariots again. He passed through the bedrolls of men, stepping around cookware and weapons scattered sloppily. He almost woke everyone up to yell at them about it but decided that they needed their sleep. There was no way of knowing what surprises the Hebrew god had for them in the woods.

  He made his way to the chariots, lined up at the edge of camp for fast hitching, and examined them in the torchlight. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. All seemed in order.

  He handed the torch to a sentry. “Go rest. I will take the next two hours,” he said. The soldier left.

  Ittai crawled up on a boulder and settled in to watch. The Elah gap opened in the distance. It was a dark night. Clouds had moved in from the west over the Great Sea. He sat still watching the valley.

  Something emerged. Movement. Ittai blinked to clear his eyes a few times.

  Dagon was crawling out of his lair.

  Ittai watched the sea god slide over stones and through the trees, slithering his way toward their army. The horses in the corral whinnied and stamped their hoofs.

  Darkness covered the figure; Ittai couldn’t see him clearly. A breeze picked up, and Ittai was back in the ocean in his youth, his test of manhood, swimming as hard as he could, fighting the water as it pulled him down into the black. Ittai pulled at the waves with every stroke, but it was no use, he couldn’t fight it any longer. And the monster circled closer from beneath the waves, its eye always watching him, and Ittai cried out to his god and clutched the amulet, but his god would not come to him, would not let him stand on his scaly hide.

  Then Ittai was back on the hillside, staring at the darkness of the valley entrance. He felt something pass over him — a shadow, a figure, he couldn’t tell.

  He turned and looked at the sky over the coast. A bank of clouds. Watch fires on the perimeter. All seemed well.

  He shook his head, blamed it on his weariness. No, he was certain he had not seen Dagon fleeing the Israelite hill country.

  Part Three

  THIRTY-ONE

  Eleazar sat in the darkness, waiting. The early morning air was cold. He wrapped his arms around his legs and pressed his face between his knees.

  For a moment, he was a boy with his father again, standing in the field outside their home.

  His arrow fell to the side — he had missed the target again. His head dropped. He would never learn it. Never learn … he felt a hand on his chin, lifting his head up.

  “That one was closer,” his father said.

  “But farther than the first one. I am making no progress.”

  “Keep your arm steady and look at the target.”

  “Men of our tribe do not learn the bow, father. Why must I?”

  “Yahweh has other plans for you. You must learn every weapon. Courage. Shoot more arrows. I want fifty more before dark.”

  “Mother will be furious.”

  “I will suffer her wrath, do not worry.”

  He lifted the bow and notched the arrow. Tilted it to the right, letting the shaft settle, then pulled it back as far as he could — not as far as his mouth; he wasn’t strong enough yet. His eyes blurred.

  He released the arrow too early. It struck the tree above the sackcloth target. He threw the bow down in anger. It was quiet. He looked at his father.

  “Control it, Eleazar. Do not be afraid to let the stillness come.”

  “Yes, father.”

  “Again.”

  He tried again and again, and again after that …

  … and then Eleazar was in a dark room, the purification ritual over. He didn’t remember what is was even for, what sin he had committed. But he remembered the priest leaving when it was over. Eleazar was clean again, but his heart was heavy. His father stared at the ground, silent.

  “Forgive me, father. I will memorize every letter of the Law; I will never miss a dot.”

  He sighed, looked at Eleazar. “Son, it is not memorizing the Law that pleases Yahweh. What grieves him is your heart. You behaved in an unclean manner because your heart is unclean.”

  “No one else follows the Law as strictly as we do!” He regretted the words immediately, but they were out, and they stung his father worse than anything he had ever said.

  “I am sorry.”

  His father nodded, eyes closed. After a moment he rose and left the room. Eleazar was alone. He had broken the great man’s heart. But none of the other boys, not one, had fathers who made them visit the priests, made them memorize the Law …

  Eleazar lifted his head. He glanced down the line of men. Nearby, David stared down the valley, his eyes vacant, his breath labored.

  Eleazar closed his eyes again. The battle would come soon. First, just a moment with her.

  She was gazing at him. It seemed like she glowed with the sun. Two children in two years. Father was proud, said the men of their family were robust and virile. She rolled her eyes at this when no one was watching but him. She wanted many of them, many children, many sons.

  “I am afraid to meet the others,” she says.

  “Women talk and chatter a lot. You will make friends at the well quickly.”

  “Do you know any of the other warriors?”

  “Yes. Josheb and Shammah have decided to come as well.”

  She lay her head against his chest and pulled his arms around her waist. She always wanted him to hold her this way. The others laughed at him for it. He lowered his face into her hair. It smelled like saffron.

  “Was this the right thing to do?” she asks.

  “Father says he is our future. Yahweh has anointed him. He will join David one day as well.”

  “Your father is a good man. Mine wasn’t.”

  She was still, melted further into his arms. The children slept quietly …

  Eleazar shivered. It all disappeared again.

  He was on the ridge, with David, about to die.

  Don’t think that.

  Eleazar sat up. His muscles felt tight and stiff from crouching against the cold stones for an hour while they waited. He opened and closed his fingers to keep them warm.

  “As soon as their morning watch is over we move,” David said.

  Eleazar looked down the slope of the ridge they were on where a Philistine watchman was doing his best to remain hidden among the rocks of an outcropping that overlooked his camp. Moonlight glinted off his helmet. With the approaching dawn, he had become careless, likely thinking about the breakfast his growling stomach was demanding. “At least our enemy is green as well,” he said, nodding toward the careless watchman.

  David followed Eleazar’s nod, then shook his head. “That is the sort of thing I have never understood. Disciplined in so many areas, stupid in so many others. Only the most foolish of commanders fails to inform his troops that helmets are u
seful only in battle, and not on lookouts where they are a beacon for all to see.”

  The Hebrew deputy commanders were nervous as well, Eleazar noticed as he turned to check them. They met his eyes and looked away quickly, probably wondering how he was able to speak so casually with the king. Eleazar rubbed his forehead with his wrist. He checked his sword again out of habit.

  To his right, visible in the moonlight, he could see the beginning of the Rephaim in the distance as the pass from the Elah narrowed. That valley led straight to Jebus and was intersected by the Bethlehem road, toward which Josheb, Benaiah, and Keth were currently rushing to stop the Sword of Dagon.

  Eleazar had not yet seen the Sword of Dagon here himself. Perhaps it was simply an attempt by the Philistines to spread fear among the Hebrews. They did such things. But Benaiah and Keth had said that two Philistines they had fought gave them a real battle, and for men who easily killed dozens at a time to have trouble with only two was cause for worry.

  Below him, the Elah stretched left, with the barley field he had seen earlier nestled near the ridges where the man lying next to him had begun his life as a warrior. “Do you ever think about that day still?”

  “What day?”

  “Goliath.”

  David pointed toward a shallow ravine in the middle of the valley where the creek, now almost dry, trickled through sandy banks.

  “That was where I waited for him,” he said.

  “I saw you from the ranks as you approached the stream, but you disappeared behind the bank for a bit. I never asked what you were doing.”

  “Finding stones. And waiting for the covering.”

  “Were you certain Yahweh had delivered him to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I heard him through the covering. His spirit. The voice is ancient. Gentle. Powerful. I just knew, like I know he is going to deliver them to us today.”

  Eleazar saw it play out again before him in an instant. The giant on the opposite bank, his army behind him on the slope, the Hebrews lined up on the hill to Eleazar’s right. He remembered the very smell of that day, the taste of the dust on the wind, the thrill of watching their enemies finally running from them instead of pursuing them.

  Eleazar shook his head. Send it to us once more, Yahweh. “Why do you continue to trust pagans and foreigners?”

  “They might always be foreigners, but they won’t always be pagans. Yahweh loves them as well.”

  “But as your bodyguard?”

  “How else to convince them that Yahweh loves them?”

  That made no sense to Eleazar, but he let it go for now. He prayed silently for the man next to him, still so young, with the weight of kingdoms on his head. He carried burdens none would ever grasp.

  They waited. As daylight arrived, they could see hundreds of Philistine soldiers marching up the pass into the hill country, led by squadrons of chariots assigned to each platoon. In each chariot was a driver and a soldier who wielded both the war bow and the lance. The charioteers rode next to one another, forming a column of twos in a tight formation. The horse teams snorted and stamped at the billowing dust of the dry valley floor.

  The Philistine camp these advance companies were now departing was still pitched, left in place for the regiments that would follow after the passage to Jebus was secure. Eleazar could see it far to the left. When he descended the slope during the attack, it would not be visible. But destroying it would be their objective as soon as they defeated the advance troops.

  Ranks of infantry and archers followed the chariots closely, using them as a screen against any ambush. Once more he noticed the lack of support regiments and traveling riffraff that followed an army on an extended campaign. Eleazar started to count them but lost track, then decided it did not matter. There were a lot of them, and that was all that mattered. He wished Josheb and Shammah were with him.

  “I am sorry for my behavior,” David said.

  Eleazar, surprised, shook his head. “I have not been at my best in recent years, either,” was all Eleazar could come up with for a reply.

  “Without you and the others, I would be in the pit.”

  “Without you, our wives would already be slaves.”

  “How is yours?”

  “I keep things from her.”

  “What?”

  Eleazar looked around to make sure he was not being overheard. “After the battle at the pool of Gibeon, I went to the tents of the Ammonites outside of town.”

  David nodded. He took a deep breath and nodded again. An anguished expression briefly crossed his face. “I have not set the best example with women.”

  “Should not matter with me.”

  “It begins with me, and I have failed.”

  “When I was there that night, I went into a woman’s tent. I didn’t —”

  “Bring it into the light.”

  Eleazar frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Yahweh heals when it is in the light and not in darkness and shadows.”

  Eleazar wondered if David was talking more to himself.

  David reached over and clasped his arm. “But it is a new day. Yahweh’s mercies are new every day. The light comes, and the day is new, and there are wars to fight.”

  Eleazar decided to let it be. He patted his water skin. Almost nothing left from the captured Philistine skins. The day would be hot.

  Then, quietly, hidden from the Philistines behind the rim of the hills lining the valley, they began to follow the Philistine army on a parallel course.

  Ittai’s morning had been rough. He didn’t have his armor carrier to help him organize a scout. He missed the man. He’d lost many companions on battlefields, but this one hurt. He would feel his absence today.

  Now, riding his chariot into the valley, cursing the kings and their foolish insistence on bringing chariots into the mountains, he searched the ridges above them carefully. He was frustrated at having been sent into the valley without a proper scout and was anxious to be reunited with his Sword of Dagon unit. There could be ambushes and traps laid for them around the next bend.

  He tried to focus on what he knew: that the Hebrews were disorganized and scattered, their tribes divided, and there was no way that they could have sent a sizeable force this quickly to stop them.

  But the horses were uneasy. They neighed and pawed and jostled his chariot. Horses always knew when something was about to happen.

  Ittai called out to his team soothingly as he rode through the gorge. If there was to be an ambush, it would happen soon.

  THIRTY-TWO

  “After this last group moves through, we take the field,” David said. “Yahweh has promised victory. Make sure we have destroyed all of them in the valley before going back to attack their camp.”

  Eleazar nodded. They would charge down the slope covered by their archers, stationed in a clump of trees down the hill to their right. Their archers would protect them from the Philistine archers, who would take cover behind the chariots. He guessed it would be five Philistines against one Hebrew. Not the worst odds they had ever faced, but considering they had no water or resupply or reserve forces to aid them, it would be close.

  He hoped there would be enough time to cut off the east and west ends of this part of the valley. The rest of the Philistine army was already plodding through the Rephaim. If David’s troops could destroy this force, they would be able to stop any more encroachments from the plains, then hold the narrow gap between the Elah and the Rephaim until Joab and Shammah could bring a larger force.

  David gave final instructions to his subordinate commanders. Eleazar waited until the other commanders had crawled back to their men to lead them to their ambush points.

  “You want the two of us charging to that ravine near the barley field?”

  “My voice will echo off the hills better in that spot. I want them to hear me.”

  “You’re going to sing to them?”

  “Remind them of something,” Davi
d said.

  “Are you ever going to use your bodyguard? You’re the king of the whole nation now. Many people hate you. You ought to give Benaiah a chance to actually do his job.”

  “Benaiah stays busy in garrison. But I don’t want them bothering me in the field.”

  “Say something inspirational. I could use one of your speeches right now,” Eleazar said.

  David started to speak, but his voice caught and he coughed harshly. It was a dry, wheezing cough. Eleazar thought about holding him down and forcing water into his mouth.

  David licked his cracked lips. “Something inspirational? Don’t be afraid. Fear comes when we see only the enemies before us and not the beheaded champions behind us.”

  “You write these down, don’t you? All of these riddles.”

  “Every one of them.”

  Eleazar waited a moment. “Why did you want Michal returned to you?”

  David fiddled with a stone for a bit as he considered it. “She was my prize. I had won her,” he said simply.

  Eleazar let it go. The moments passed. The last of the chariots in the squadron crossed through the gap to their left.

  David knelt down and pressed his face into the dirt. He muttered something that Eleazar couldn’t hear. Then he slowly sat up and took several deep breaths. He looked at Eleazar. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m with you.”

  David nodded, then stood up. He raised his fist to the sky and shouted, “Lord, the God of our salvation, you have always shielded our heads in the day of battle. We call upon you again!”

  Then he sprinted down the slope. Eleazar followed.

  They leapt over the small boulders in their path, trying to get to the middle of the field before the next regiment appeared in the pass. The Philistine commanders had let their units drift apart during the morning march. They would pay for it dearly.

  It was not the cowering, soft man in the council room at Hebron but the fiery champion of his people who charged into the valley ahead of Eleazar. It seemed like David ran faster than a deer, and Eleazar had to concentrate to keep up. He watched the large sword of Goliath slap against his king’s back, the prize taken so long ago not far from this very field, returning to bring more death to its former masters. Eleazar sucked in the cool morning air and pushed himself faster, glancing down and to the right at the rear ranks of infantry as they marched farther up the valley.