Covenant of War (19 page)

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 useful 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.

“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,” David 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.

After running out onto level ground, the two men reached the ravine in the middle of the field and stopped, panting. David, his auburn hair and beard streaming with sweat, pulled the sword from over his shoulder out of the leather scabbard securing it to his back. He held it over his head.

His powerful voice, trained and strengthened from years of singing war songs and shouting commands over the noise of battle, stopped the entire column of Philistines, was no longer weak and raspy sounding. It surprised Eleazar.

“Sea filth! Come back to me and let Yahweh finish what he started in this valley!”

Ittai heard the voice and ordered his rider to halt the chariot. He had instinctively pulled the war bow out of its carrier when they entered the narrow area of the valley the Hebrews called Pas Dammim, knowing that if there was going to be an ambush, this would be the place.

His was the first chariot in the squadron, so he had to look back over the top of all ten chariots in his lead platoon. The king who marched for glory this day was in the rear of the battalion, and Ittai hoped that if there was an attack, he would fall immediately.

Ittai saw two Hebrew warriors standing near the small ravine they had passed moments before. He cursed the man who was supposed to be watching their rear, though he was actually angry at the commanders who would let the units stray so far apart in the dark.

The Hebrew shouted in the Philistine tongue, and since Ittai had heard every word, this could be only one man. Ittai clasped the amulet of Dagon he wore around his neck and spat to ward off evil. But he was glad; no more waiting, no more wasting time.

“Form the perimeter! Ambush is coming! Grab your loins, men; that is David himself, and he carries the sword of Goliath. Let’s get it back!” he shouted, bringing the war bow up. The Hebrew was foolishly within range of his ten chariot archers. He pulled the string to the corner of his lip, tilted the bow slightly sideways, stared hard at the Hebrew’s torso, and released the arrow.

The shot was perfect, but the Hebrew king leaped away from the bank before it struck him. Ittai saw him roll when he hit the ground and crouch behind a bank of sand. His partner did the same.

Ittai’s platoon stood frozen, unwilling to believe that the dreaded warlord was actually attacking them.

“Get moving! Ambush is coming! Ambush is coming!”

“But there are only two of them, Lord!” his chariot driver shouted over the noise of men suddenly jumping to action.

Ittai pointed up the ridge to his left. “They’re up there, watch for them! Our scouts have succeeded in warning us again, I see.”

He directed the chariots to circle, but that was difficult in the hilly and boulder-strewn terrain. He cursed the Philistine kings once more for foolishly ordering chariots to accompany them. The Hebrews were not, contrary to the rulers’ assertions, afraid of them on sight.

David replaced the sword on his back and tugged out his sling, two cords of goat hair with a leather notch tied between them. Eleazar peered over the sand bank watching the rear Philistine platoon form their perimeter. He desperately wished that water would suddenly flow down the creek bed to quench his thirst.

“They aren’t attacking. Their commander is smart.”

“Yahweh has given them to us,” replied David, reaching over and plucking another stone out of the creek bed. He had a full pouch of them already but apparently had a ritual. Eleazar saw him whispering something as he handled the stones, as though blessing them. An arrow hit a rock next to his arm.

“What are you doing?” Eleazar asked.

“Reminding them how this went last time.”

David fitted the stone into the notch and held it to his heart, muttering things Eleazar could not hear. Eleazar waited for two more arrows to whistle over his head before stealing a glance over the top of the sandbank.

Then the Hebrew archers on the hillside began shooting their own arrows into the Philistine ranks. There were precious few of them, but enough to divert attention momentarily from the bank where David and Eleazar crouched.

David used the distraction.

He shouted and jumped up at the same time, leaping across the creek in a bound, the muscles in his legs twitching furiously. Eleazar watched him scramble up the side of the opposite bank, swing the stone three times, and then release it as he ran across the field.

Eleazar did not see the stone fly, but he saw one of the Philistine troops pitch backward, a spray of blood from his crushed face showering the chariot he was climbing out of.

David flung another stone, then another so quickly that Eleazar did not see them actually release, but he heard the sound of terrified men as the hail of stones from the running warrior killed Philistines.

Ittai ducked as a stone hit his aide in the eye. The man fell over without a noise, blood pumping in spurts onto the rocks. Ittai slipped on the blood, and on the blood of other troops of his that had fallen from the arrow assault, and he shouted orders to form the perimeter with the chariots, heard the terrified horses neighing in fright and kicking at their handlers.
Hardened war horses behaving like colts!

He joined in the effort to calm them, but the horses were frothing at the mouth and slinging sweat, shrieking in agony.

“Their god has attacked us!” one of his men screamed.

Ittai crawled to the nearest perimeter chariot and peered through the wheel spokes to see what the rest of their army was doing. Each platoon had circled as they were supposed to, but they were too far apart to link up to coordinate a counterattack. He cursed in frustration. The amulet of Dagon thumped against his neck. He stuffed it down the front of his armor.

Need to move. Who? Where? Their king — kill their king!

Ittai spotted the Hebrew king, still charging and slinging stones from the pouch at his waist. Ittai knew that Hebrew slingers could be formidable adversaries, but this man
did
move like a god, running and leaping over tremendous distances and firing stones with deadly precision, hitting every target he chose. Ittai had never seen such a display.

“Hit him with everything! Every archer! Take him out and the rest of them will run!” Ittai shouted to his lead platoon.

Eleazar roused himself from his awed stupor at David’s attack. He raced out from behind the sandbank and shouted and waved his sword over his head, staring at the hillside he and David had just come from.

At the signal, two columns of Hebrew troops poured over the ridge into the valley, shouting with battle rage. The Philistine platoon closest to him, the one suffering most from David’s murderous assault and the swarms of arrows from the grove where the Hebrew archers were positioned, turned to face them.

Philistine arrows flew sporadically, the troops unsure where to direct their fire and afraid to raise their heads over their chariots for fear of David’s stones. None of them noticed Eleazar.

He raised his sword again and then pointed it at the huddle of Philistines. He saw that their commander had directed his men to concentrate all of their arrows at David.
Good strategy — won’t work
. Eleazar dropped his sword sharply. The Hebrew archers sent arrows in the direction Eleazar was gesturing.

The two Hebrew foot-soldier companies reached the bottom of the valley, one on the east end and one on the west, trapping the Philistine battalion and cutting it off from the rest of the force out of sight down the valley.

Ittai, between directing the fire of his remaining archers and trying to settle the horses, saw the trap close. He saw the company of Hebrews disappear over the bend in the valley to the east, where he knew they were setting up defensive positions against a counterattack from soldiers that might be arriving farther up the Rephaim. He was able to see the western approach from where he crouched, and he watched as the Hebrews formed ranks on that end as well. There were only a few companies of them, but if they were stout men, they could defend that gap against assaults long enough to allow a third charge to come directly over the hill and rush across the middle, overwhelming his battalion and completing the ambush.

Ittai glanced furtively between the Hebrew king, still slinging rocks like some awful shepherd war god, and the top of the ridge, where he expected the next wave to come from. A soldier next to him, a youth who had just joined his lead platoon before the march, took an arrow in the leg. It cut deep, and blood spurted. The boy cried out and grabbed Ittai’s waist in pain.

The boy screamed for help and pleaded with Ittai to stop the blood. Hopelessly, Ittai simply pulled him back against his chest, holding him while his sobs became weaker and weaker. The horses shrieked. Stones and arrows struck necks and faces. The boy whispered something.

Ittai did not hear it. He released the boy and started moving.

Eleazar, still standing in the open, was waiting for the chariot ranks to break.

He watched as the horses in the Philistine chariot platoons broke
loose all at once, driving open the perimeter ranks of the battalion and scattering men and equipment everywhere.

A chariot team whirled and raced into the valley, out of control, then veered straight toward him. He darted to the side to avoid it. A wheel struck a rock and burst into splinters, sending the chariot cartwheeling. Horses and men screamed in pain. A horse from the chariot team caught its leg in a hole in the ground. Its leg bone snapped so loudly that it pierced the din.

The charioteer was tossed from the back and landed in front of another runaway team, which tried to avoid the fallen man but veered just enough to sever his head with a wheel.

More chariot teams charged away into the field where the rocky ground caused them to stumble and fall. Wheel spokes burst, men were trampled, and still the arrows flew.

Eleazar sensed no command or control in the Philistine ranks. Officers shouted orders sporadically. Troops cowered behind their section leaders. He overheard men screaming that the avenging Hebrew god was going to cast them into the sea to be judged by Dagon.

When the horses of the platoon closest to him had all scattered, Eleazar raced forward to join the fight. A Philistine archer swung his bow toward Eleazar, who rushed at the man. The archer released the arrow a moment too soon — high and to the left. Eleazar tackled the archer, sending him crashing into another soldier before he killed them both with his sword. They were his first kills in a long time. He leapt back to his feet, regretting the deaths for a moment, loving it the next. Then he tossed his head back and shouted with battle rage.