Covenant of War (9 page)

The walk from the royal residence to his home usually took Eleazar less than a Sabbath day’s walk–the distance a man could travel and not violate the Sabbath. He intended to use every moment along the way to think about what he had seen in the council chamber. Josheb had stood his ground, had told David what only he could tell him. So now the king knew what his men were thinking.

The old David would be horrified at this king.
Yahweh, open his eyes. Do what it takes
.

The heat was suffocating as Eleazar walked down the entrance steps of the spacious palace. He saw numerous courtiers and tribal leaders waiting in line to have an audience with their new ruler. They sat on cushions in the shade provided by servants holding broad, purple-dyed wool blankets on the ends of poles, an extravagance meant to impress upon visitors and emissaries that David was wealthy and powerful.

Along the courtyard wall, casually nibbling on dates and enjoying the stares they were getting from the men, were concubines
from Ammon, sent as tribute to persuade the Hebrew Lion that it was not worth his time to attack their kingdom. Eleazar gave them one more glance, then shifted his gaze away.

A woman ran up to him with a roasted piece of lamb in one hand and her other palm open. It smelled wonderful, but he shook his head and pushed past her.

Councils of minor elders, those who had less influence than the men who had been in the chamber that morning, waited impatiently at the far end of the courtyard for word of decisions made within. They eyed him expectantly, and when he shook his head, they lost interest in him and concentrated on the entertainment provided for those waiting.

On this day it was a troop of acrobats, tossing one another high into the air and performing feats of swordsmanship.

“Three flips or four? Three flips or four?” a man was crying out to the crowd, waiting for them to shout their guesses. The crowd chanted four, and the acrobat launched into the air, performed four flips, then landed on his feet with a wave. A roar of approval rose up.

The displays reminded Eleazar of the courts of the Egyptians that Benaiah had once described and seemed dramatically out of place among the tribesmen with roots in shepherding and farming. Much had changed in recent years, though. He shook his head.

Turning left onto the main street, he looked at the quiet religious quarter of the city, where the Levites and the priests had established a formal system of sacrifices and observances according to the Law of Moses for the first time in centuries. As opposed to the public courtyard near the palace, the corridors were silent with contemplation. Scholars of the Law came from all parts of the land, from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, because David had offered them sanctuary. They spent all of their waking hours hunched over scrolls. The people had not been observant of the ways of Yahweh, and David was determined to change that.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread would be the first official nationwide observance of Yahweh’s ordinances in generations. It was set to begin on the fifteenth day of the following month of Nisan and was to remind the people how Yahweh had delivered them out of the pharaoh’s slave camps generations ago. The
korban pesach
lamb had been bought from the most expensive herd in the land and was being kept in a secret place to keep it from blemishes.

It was an ancient tradition, one that Eleazar’s heart yearned to see among his people again. Only pockets of tribal villages had celebrated it in the past centuries. Eleazar mused at how David could be so contradictory — adamantly demanding that the observances of Yahweh be restored while still allowing the pagans to pitch camps just outside his walls and their performers to soil his courts.

He passed the single soldier barracks after leaving the holy quarter. It was the part of the city where the regiments of the newly formed standing army lived. David had conscripted three corps of troops to rotate full-time duty as the main fighting force of Judah. After all the years of raiding, they finally had the wealth to pay for a standing force, and the men no longer had to serve only between the planting and harvesting seasons. This standing force and its steady wages were an immense boost to the trading and merchant activity in the city, and the city had flourished as a result.

There were five thousand of them living in the barracks quarter, sharing rooms and facilities, living, eating, sleeping, sparring, and laughing together, developing the camaraderie that would lead them to ever higher feats of bravery and courage as they fought for their fellow warriors. There would be a mass reorganization of the military now that David was the king of a united Israel, so the troops knew that soon everything would change. The soldiers were given leave to celebrate the coronation of the king and told to report back in two weeks. That had been a week ago.

He saw that some of the men who had remained were gathered
around a private well in their courtyard, dug to keep them away from the women at the main city wells. Every precaution needed to be taken, especially with the unmarried troops. There had been numerous stonings following the discovery of a married woman and an unmarried soldier over the past year as discipline had begun to slacken. The war had officially ended only the week before, but the fighting had eased since that day at the pool of Gibeon. It was a day no one spoke of anymore, a day that had died and was buried under the sands of the harsh desert sun with all the rest of the Hebrew blood spilled by Hebrews.

Eleazar deliberately changed his thoughts and smiled to himself as Gareb came to mind. Gareb had arrived among them after the loss at Gilboa seven years before, coming as many did when he had nowhere else to go in the face of the Philistine threat. He had been the armor bearer of prince Jonathan once. Better days, Eleazar thought. Gareb was now the member of the Thirty in charge of discipline and order, and had endless headaches rounding up the troops who let their licentious nature get the best of them.

Which was odd, of course, as it was well known that a large number of women came to David’s bed on a regular basis. The old David would never have taken pleasures forbidden to his men. As their army had grown, it became necessary for the leaders to make periodic visits to the darkened corners of the city to pull out soldiers trapped within. It was Gareb’s grumbling and complaints that had caught the ear of Josheb, and it was agreed before council that Josheb would be the one to confront David about the problem. The army was lazy because its leader was lazy.

The troops sparred in the courtyard of the barracks so that the citizens of Hebron could watch them. They were trained by the Giborrim. Unmarried members of the Giborrim, including the mercenaries, were given their own barracks. Occasionally a member of the Thirty, the most elite unit of the Giborrim, would step in and
challenge all comers, and the result, without fail, was a platoon of bruised and cut warriors and a laughing champion.

Josheb was a particular lover of this exercise. He had the record for the most appearances in the sparring arena. He would vary his method of challenging himself. Sometimes he arranged for one of his arms to be fastened to a smelting anvil as he fought, other times he was armed with only his fists while his dozens of attackers carried heavy weapons. The troops adored him even as they were pummeled, as they adored all of the famous Thirty and the Three who led them. Eleazar, Josheb, and Shammah cultivated the image of the Thirty very carefully. The people needed their heroes, needed the hope that valiant men gave an oppressed nation.

Eleazar came to the end of the barracks quarter and walked down the street where the married members of the Giborrim lived. In addition to the estates they had along the borderlands, which David had cleverly given them as both a reward for their service and as additional incentive to fight for him, many members of the Giborrim kept homes in the city of Hebron itself. Women liked to socialize, men loved competing for power and prestige in the royal court, and children loved the company of others their age to get into mischief with.

None of the homes could be considered large; the dependence on few things of material value was ingrained into the culture of his people and in the fighting men in particular. But as Eleazar approached the dwellings where the Thirty lived, there was a noticeable growth in the size of the homes. This was largely due to the sizes of the families. The men frequently teased each other about, as Josheb put it, the “lack of warrior spirit in their loins” if they did not have at least six or seven children.

Competition was of the utmost importance to the Thirty. They had no equal when fighting, so they were forced to look inward. Every social gathering (and many of the ceremonies, when the
priests were not watching) eventually became a wrestling contest or a foot race. Not even the older and supposedly more mature members of the Giborrim could resist the temptation of besting one of their fellow warriors. When it happened, wives would roll their eyes and call the children to watch, since the men had made it a standing order in their homes that boys should watch and learn from their fathers, and girls should learn to tolerate these displays.

Eleazar ascended the short hill where the homes of the Thirty perched near the walls of Hebron. It was just enough of a rise that he could see over the rooftops of all the buildings he had passed on his way from the palace.

He paused a moment to watch the city as it bustled. The unobstructed sun beat down witheringly on the sand of the street. He wiped sweat from his eyes, then glanced at a building standing near the end of the street, near his own home. It was David’s private residence, the one he’d ordered built so that he could escape the trappings of the royal house and live among his brother warriors whenever he sought solace in their company.

He had not been there in months.

Eleazar sighed and was about to continue his walk when he noticed that he was being watched.

A woman stood in the doorway of a nearby house. Her hair spilled out of her head wrappings in an unruly manner, and she held a basket of clothing. She looked away as soon as she saw him looking at her and disappeared into the house. It was Sherizah, Benaiah’s wife.

Women did not make eye contact with men who were not their husbands, but the wives of the warriors closest to David had forged a strong bond and were permitted to socialize in a more informal manner.

Eleazar continued walking. Sherizah and Eleazar’s wife, Rizpah, had become close over the years. Both had been captured in the
Amalekite destruction of Ziklag, their previous home, then rescued when Benaiah, Eleazar, and Josheb had tracked them down. The two women shared the same gentle temperament, but Sherizah seemed to carry far darker secrets.

Rizpah had told him once that Benaiah and Sherizah had lost several children during an Amalekite raid years ago, before they came to David. She and Benaiah had always struggled since, although things had been better between them since the births of two sons. Sons always brought happiness and long life to a household. But tension remained, and Eleazar knew that the strain of Benaiah’s constant absence from home took its toll. Many men did not care about their domestic affairs, but the Giborrim did.

Eleazar found himself at the gate at the back of his own house, having wandered there through a side alley littered with carpentry tools and work benches that signified yet another project that Josheb’s wife was demanding of him. Deborah was proud and talkative, and her endless nagging of Josheb had been the subject of countless jokes around campfires in the woods. Since Josheb lived next door to Eleazar, he could frequently hear them arguing in the courtyard of their four-room house, something other women did not have the courage to do with their husbands. He assumed it was this fiery personality that had attracted Josheb, the man who never backed away from challenges, to her in the first place. She too had been captured in the Ziklag raid, and there had been such poignant joy when they were reunited that it convinced Eleazar that no matter how much they might fight, they would always make up.

Eleazar was proud of his dwelling. The stones had been expertly cut and sealed. The beams were of fine wood, carefully chosen — not from the Lebanon cedars that some of the others in the Thirty had purchased for their homes, but equally strong and beautiful.

Eleazar did not like to spend much of his large bounty, collected during his raiding years, on frivolous things like fancy furnishings.
Cushions and thick bedding made him uncomfortable. It was not uncommon that his wife found him curled up on the roof in the middle of the night, having shoved aside his blankets to seek the refuge of the cold stone and night breeze. Many years of desert fighting did not easily leave a man.

Yet he liked the home, even if he was never fully comfortable in it. He had allowed his father-in-law, a man of trade, to build this home to his wife’s wishes. Eleazar had built the bridegroom house himself, according to custom, but he’d vowed to never do it again. When they moved from Hebron with the king to a new capital, as was certain to happen one day, they would repeat the process. Eleazar would enjoy his wife’s satisfaction with planning yet another new home.

He paused after entering the gate, the sunlight warm on his face. No breeze stirred the dust in the streets, no sound of warning. But inexplicably, his neck began to prickle with the feeling that he was being watched.

He looked left and right casually, avoiding warning whoever was watching him. He pretended to be examining the gate that a local carpenter had recently replaced. The wood creaked a little as he pushed it back and forth, his eyes discreetly sweeping the area around him and covering the city walls that towered nearby.

Nothing he could see. Nothing he could smell. But he felt alert and wary, felt danger as real as if he were staring at the tip of a javelin slicing toward his face.

He felt cold, shivering even in the broad light of day. His eyes lifted from the gate.

A figure was standing against the alley wall.