Covenant of War

by Cliff Graham

  He stumbled forward into the woods, the sunlight shining in patches on the ground in front of him, the deep forest echoing with the sound of souls wailing and entering darkness.

  On the road, the arrows had missed them.

  Josheb hit the Philistines first, lowering his head and ramming them before they could prepare another volley. He spun several times quickly, dropping two with his own sword while tripping another. He stabbed the downed man, then repeated the movement again, faster. Keth did the same, and Benaiah. They were fresh and angry, and before long the archers were all dead.

  Benaiah did not let himself dwell on the failed arrows, on the impossible miss, because now Keth was running into the woods, and he followed him. Ahead of them, Josheb bellowed his fearsome war cry, the cudgel and sword prepared. Benaiah’s club was out. They pursued the Philistine troops.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The battle spread up the mountainside through the forest. The Thirty were taking advantage of the concealment to lash out from hidden burrows and behind tree trunks. It was a storm of shouting and metal striking metal, sudden pauses and shouts, then more clashing of metal.

  The gash in Gareb’s face hurt badly. The bleeding had not stopped, only slowed, and he hoped it would go away soon; it was making him lightheaded. And thirsty. He slouched against a boulder and fumbled for his water pouch.

  He could hear Sword commanders shouting orders in their heathen language. He treasured the tiny sip of water, felt it prickle his bloody throat, reigniting the terrible pain in his face. Water drained out of the hole in his cheek. His arms shook. He stared into the opening of the water pouch, willing more of the liquid to appear. He tied it shut and let it sling on his side again.

  And then, suddenly, he heard a series of shouts, clashes of metal, and the thumping sound of men running echoing across the mountainside. Then silence, then confusion, then more voices. The wind picked up, the trees overhead began to sway, and just when Gareb was about to climb a trunk to see what was going on, a hoard of Philistines erupted into his little clearing.

  He leapt to his feet, sword ready to plunge into the first torso that got near him, when he saw that the Philistines were battling each other.

  Battling each other?

  Their eyes showed madness, their screams primal and animal-like. They clawed at each other in horror and stabbed wildly. A sudden gust shoved the trees overhead viciously. Gareb could smell something in the air; he could not identify it. He darted to the edge of the clearing as the Philistines, dozens of them, continued to kill each other.

  Then something appeared out of the trees. Gareb froze.

  It was a figure, a man-like thing, but it had a massive sword covered with fire. The warrior with the flaming sword raised his huge arms above his head and yelled a war cry that resounded and shook the earth, as if a lion as vast as the mountain itself was on the hunt, and Gareb covered his ears in fear.

  The fearsome warrior slashed his sword in blazing arcs, cutting down Philistines. There was smoke and fire.

  Then the warrior vanished.

  The horrified Philistines who remained ran into the forest, where there was another outburst of clashing, and then all was still except for the noise of coughing, gagging, and men calling for help.

  The sounds roused Gareb out of his shock. He stumbled forward on numb legs again. He looked at his hands. His fingernails were caked with gore.

  All the things he should have been thinking about, and he was thinking about his fingernails. There were remnants of the Philistine’s eyes under them. He shook his head. The wind was dying, his ears ringing. He was so very, very thirsty.

  Who had the warrior been? A demon?

  Branches gave way as he staggered forward, and he found himself standing in another clearing. Josheb was there; he tensed up as Gareb appeared. Benaiah and Keth were there also, on either side of nearby trees, waiting to ambush him.

  He stared at them. They stared back.

  “What happened?” Josheb asked. His eyes shot back to the thicket surrounding them.

  “Don’t know,” Gareb mumbled, his mouth swollen nearly shut from the dagger wound. “Heard something, saw something, and the Philistines all started running.”

  “Saw what? And what was that roar?”

  Gareb shook his head, unable to speak.

  “We killed the rest of that pack as they ran by,” Benaiah said, gesturing at the bodies on the ground, “but they were already doing the job themselves.”

  “Thirty! If you are disengaged, rally on my voice!” Josheb called out. The four of them took up defensive positions on the edge of the clearing to be ready should any remaining Philistines arrive as well.

  In a few moments, teams of three began to appear in the clearing, some warriors leaning on each other. Gareb counted them.

  Twenty.

  With the four of them, and Shammah and Abishai elsewhere, they were still missing four. After waiting a moment longer, Josheb called out again. No response came from the woods.

  “What happened? Why did the Philistines go mad and start killing each other?” Josheb asked the group. They all answered with shaking heads.

  “Someone attacked them. It wasn’t any of us.”

  All eyes snapped to Gareb. He was having trouble finding words.

  “A warrior. Not like a man.”

  Josheb lifted his face to the sky, his eyes closed and his arms outstretched. “Our God has delivered us, men. He has kept his promise.” There was murmured agreement. Josheb lowered his arms and looked around. “I can’t see all of you, so I am calling out names. Answer if you hear. Elhanan!”

  “Here, sir.”

  “Igal!”

  “Here, sir.”

  Josheb counted them all. They were still missing four men.

  The silence hung, suspended in the heat of midday. Each man stared at the ground, gasping for breath from his exertions, trying to hold back his grief. Gareb clenched his jaw several times to ease the stiffness in his face.

  Josheb finally nodded.

  “We will mourn them later. We need to get back to the king now.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Reposition the men! We can hold them!” David shouted up the slope.

  He called out order after order, but none of the men would turn around. Behaving like the green troops they are, he thought, desperate now. He had no way of knowing whether the Thirty had been able to stop the Sword troops, no way of knowing what happened to his third assault. He knew nothing.

  He stared at the Philistine platoons charging toward the gap, then felt a glimmer of hope when he saw that it was not a full regiment after all, merely a few platoons moving side by side.

  “Get back!” he screamed. “Hit them!” But his men were gone. Yahweh, what now? Pull back with the men? Stay in the fight? What about Eleazar?

  No answer.

  Shouts. Philistines coming up the valley toward him. They had taken heart at the sight of the fleeing Hebrews and were in proper formation to attack him.

  David closed his eyes, took a weary breath, opened them again. He raced toward Eleazar.

  The Philistine with the torch did not see Eleazar approaching behind him. He lowered the flame to the tops of the stalks, setting the edge of the field on fire. The sea breeze was stirring and would whip it into an inferno quickly.

  Eleazar did not slow. He seized him by the back of the tunic, swung his sword, and severed the man’s torch-bearing arm. Then he yanked the soldier backward on top of the small flame that had been ignited. The Philistine screamed, the bloody stump of his arm spraying Eleazar in the face.

  Eleazar rolled the man several times over the fire. After a few frantic seconds of rolling and stamping, the flames died away, but there were several spots where embers still glowed.

  He felt the empty Philistine water skin on his side, sliced open by an arrow.

  How to put it out?

  Eleazar grabbed the Philistine’s arm and held it over the site of the flames, letti
ng the blood seeping out of the wound drench the embers, then picked up the fallen torch and dipped it into the blood pool gathering under the Philistine.

  He fought despair. They were coming. Vast hoards of them would be filling the valley soon, and they would overwhelm every town and village and settlement in the land, and they would slaughter and rape without mercy or end.

  And the people would run, he thought. The people would have to run away again, always fleeing and cowering and hiding and begging and pleading with other nations. They were weak, just like he was weak, as he had been when he had gone to the tents of the Ammonites, running away like a coward from his wife and home …

  But Yahweh delivered me then. He can do it again.

  Eleazar saw David at the western end of the valley running toward him. Also approaching were the Philistine remnants, who had been organized and were now charging forward.

  David was fast, much faster than any of the Philistines chasing him, so he outran them and slammed into Eleazar, hugging him and giving him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Thought you went to rally the men,” Eleazar said.

  David was panting heavily. “I did. The men are … too green. Never should have brought them … so many foolish decisions.”

  “We didn’t have a choice.” Eleazar pointed south. “Our homes are only three valleys that direction. You said yourself — if we pull back, the Philistines take this valley and we’ll never get it back. By the time you rally the men, they will have filled this gap with too many troops. I have to hold them here.”

  “We can regroup later. Let’s get moving.”

  “I am holding this field.”

  David, leaning forward, hands on his knees, to catch his breath, looked up at him. “Is it worth your life?”

  “This farmer would think so,” Eleazar said, gesturing at the field. “His wife and kids are probably nearby.”

  David nodded. “Then we will do it together.”

  “Don’t be a fool. It’s not worth your life.”

  “If you think I am going to abandon —”

  “You die and the whole kingdom falls,” Eleazar snapped. “Get back and rally the others. I have to hold here.”

  The pursuing Philistine troops were close now. David looked at them, then at Eleazar, who raised his arms impatiently.

  David shook his head. “Your woman and children —”

  “— will be enslaved with the rest of our people if you die. Now get back and rally the others!”

  Eleazar’s shout seemed to stun David. No one had given him orders in many years.

  “You’re certain?” David asked.

  Eleazar seized David by the tunic. Pulling him close, he pointed south again. “Didn’t you hear me? I said our homes are only three valleys over from here! If I don’t hold this ground right now, and you don’t rally the men for a counterattack, my family dies anyway!”

  “But if we run back now, the Philistines will —”

  “All they ever see is us running!”

  David stared at him, and Eleazar saw that he finally understood.

  The Philistines were almost to the edge of the field. Eleazar saw David’s eyes narrow, fighting emotion. David placed his hand on Eleazar’s forehead. He whispered something. A prayer. “The Lord wills it. Make your stand, brother. I’ll be back quickly.”

  “Care for my family … if I fall.”

  David looked down, then back into his eyes. “I will. Your family will never be without.” Then he nodded firmly. “But you will make it. I will not see you in Sheol yet.”

  David left. Eleazar watched him run across the field back to the slope, where he would eventually find his men and demand to know why they had lost heart and abandoned them. His anger would be terrible. A Philistine officer dispatched a squad to chase David and they veered away, already losing ground to the fleet-footed Hebrew king.

  Eleazar planned fast. The Philistines had lost their archers, so they would need to get close to kill him. As it was, all they had to do was run him down in a concentrated assault. They were heavy infantry with war axes and spears, able to lock shields and deploy their weapons through the gaps.

  But the Philistine foot soldiers were too consumed with battle rage to listen to the efforts of their officers to organize them, and they charged side by side at Eleazar, standing in the middle of the field.

  Eleazar lifted his face to the sky one final time, his eyes closed.

  He was back in the woods outside the city gates, and the woman was there in the tents, offering herself to him, and he reached out to touch her roughly. But her skin was cold as death. The skin of a slave. He saw her as someone’s daughter. A child. And in that moment he remembered the words of his father.

  If your courage holds in the small battles, it will hold in the great ones.

  And Eleazar had turned away from the woman and stumbled out the tent, and Yahweh had sent a cold wind to refresh and revive him. The tents of the Ammonite camp were blown down by the wind, and Eleazar screamed with relief as he escaped darkness, delivered by the hand of Yahweh.

  The Philistines were almost upon him now. His eyes opened; he blinked in the hot sunlight.

  His wife, his children. He wanted to see them married, wanted to toss grandchildren into the air and tell them of the old days. He did not want to die in this lonely place. He saw his father again, saw him holding his face between his hands and kissing his head. He remembered when Yahweh saved him in the tents of the Ammonites, and a thousand other times. He understood now what David had told him, and he saw not just the enemies before him, but the beheaded champions behind.

  If your courage holds in the small battles, my son, it will hold in the great ones.

  “God of my father!” he screamed through blistered lips. “You have delivered me on countless battlefields, both in my heart and on earth! I have not forgotten! Now show the power of your covering!”

  Then they came, and he lifted the sword to eye level to deflect the first attack and guided the point into the throat of another soldier. Then he leaped, kicking a weapon out of a hand and slicing a deep cut across a fourth man’s arm. The last two men in the squad rushed him, and he killed them.

  The deaths of an entire squad of soldiers within the first minute of the fight caused the rest of the onrushing troops to balk. Eleazar called out to them to attack, feeling something crackling in his muscles begging for release. He was now surrounded, the company having formed a perimeter around the barley field. They held their weapons up, over a hundred troops, angry and frightened at the same time.

  Ittai, panting from running across the field, came up behind the crowd of soldiers on the edge of the barley field surrounding the Hebrew warrior. He’d almost joined the chase for David, but the man was too fast.

  The Hebrew, crouched like an animal in the center, was keeping the troops at bay even though he called for them to attack. Ittai saw the pile of dead Philistines at his feet and knew that many more would fall before this man died.

  Spears flew toward the Hebrew, who spun in a tight circle and knocked all of them out of the air with his sword. He then snatched one of them and flung it with such force that it impaled a man through his armor. When another soldier charged, the Hebrew flung another spear, then kicked another up with his foot and threw it at a third, who crumpled backward with the spear shaft jutting out of his skull.

  The man shouted something, his eyes wild with battle rage, his muscles and arms twitching as though possessed. Ittai looked away from him at the surrounding ranks and searched for an officer’s helmet before realizing his was the only one. The Hebrew had killed all of the remaining officers but himself.

  “Attack him! Everyone! Rush him!” he bellowed. His voice was loud and authoritative and troops began to move, but not fast enough. “If you attack one at a time he will kill all of you! Everyone go, now!”

  Spears flew and were deflected, pikes were thrust, but the Hebrew held his ground, swinging the blade with blinding speed, cutti
ng down ranks of soldiers. The barley was trampled and covered with blood and bodies, dozens of bodies, and still the Hebrew fought, moving forward without fear or mercy. Ittai saw demons in his eyes.

  He gripped the amulet again.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Eleazar was no longer afraid, did not care how much his arm was beginning to hurt. He knew only that there were more enemies, and he would slaughter them until there were no more, until this field and sacred valley was free of the pagan filth that trespassed here. He saw fire everywhere. Fire consumed his eyes and arms. Fire burned in his nostrils, blood sprayed his face, his arm blocked and thrust, parried and sliced, blocked again, sliced again.

  Bodies piled up around him. There were many left to kill, so he stabbed his blade into a man’s guts and pulled the soldier close to his left side to use as a shield. A Philistine pointed a pike at him and Eleazar cut his fingers off when the pike got close.

  His sword arm burned with fatigue, but the fire burned brighter and hotter, and men died.

  At the top of the slope, despite his fury at the deserting troops, David paused and turned, afraid that he would see victorious Philistines carrying the headless body of his friend over their heads as a war trophy. Instead, he saw the scuffling of massed bodies kicking up dust.

  The fight went on, and somehow, Eleazar was holding the ground.

  Eleazar’s own sword snapped in half when it struck someone’s armor, so he caught the hilt of an incoming sword, guided it with its own force back toward the Philistine’s eye. It missed and hit the helmet. He smashed it again, this time crushing the ear and forcing the man to his knees. He ripped the helmet off the Philistine with his left arm and swung it into the face of another charging soldier. Still they came, and he fought them.

  He had mad thoughts, thoughts of songs in the camp, of his son’s rapid growth, his wife’s oddly shaped feet. He slapped the broken blade’s side across an arm that reached in too far, then kicked out and tripped two charging warriors. Against all common sense, the Philistines were still charging him in ones and twos and dying by the dozen.