David Ascendant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 7) (6 page)

Lahmi had his eyes blindfolded. He was led to another location not far from where he and Ittai had been. He stood in the warm breeze of sundown, but a chill crept through his bones as he heard the arrival of about three or four other men.

Goliath said, “Sons of Rapha, this is Lahmi of Gath, our newest tadpole in the service of Dagon.”

Lahmi heard the men applaud. They were the officers of the warrior cult. His new brothers.

Goliath stopped speaking. Now Ishbi said, “Be ready to fight, tadpole.”

Lahmi stood his ground, and raised his hands in readiness to grapple. He couldn’t see through the blindfold, so he felt awkward spinning around, not knowing from which direction his attackers would come.

The first attack was a slap on his rear, followed by chuckling from the warriors.

He spun around to try to face the slapper. Instead, he got another slap on the arm, a hard contact. It stung. He tried to reach out quickly and grab the offender’s hand, but he was not quick enough.

Then a series of hard stinging slaps coming from all directions assaulted him. It made him dizzy. He felt like a fool wildly grasping at the air, being laughed at by a cadre of his superiors.

Then the first punch struck him. It hit his left arm. He felt a shooting pain and grabbed his arm in protection. He rubbed the sting out of it. It was a hard hit.

The next one was just as hard, a hit in the leg. He yelped in pain. It must have been a kick.

“Stop your squawking, tadpole. You are a warrior, not a woman.” It was Ishbi again. “Or are you a woman? Maybe you are just a dog for our pleasure.”

Another hit. Lahmi became angry. He started to swing in the air. Maybe he could guess and get lucky, connecting with some giant’s jaw who was lunging at the same moment.

It was not to be. A flurry of kicks and punches rained down upon him. They overwhelmed him.

He dropped to the desert floor trying desperately to protect his head and groin.

Then it all stopped. He coughed out the dust that had gotten into his lungs.

“Get up and fight like a giant,” Ishbi’s voice said.

Lahmi got up, limping. But he was up. He was determined to face the impossible odds against him.

He could hear the labored breathing of his initiators closing in. It occurred to him that maybe he had tired them out with his ability to take a beating.

He felt a blade slide down his tunic, barely grazing his skin, drawing blood. The tunic dropped to the ground.

A hand grabbed his loin cloth and ripped it off of him.

He was now naked and exposed before the circle of taunters. They whistled and yelped sexual remarks at him.

He guarded his genitals, knowing they were the part of his body most vulnerable to pain.

Another slap on his rear.

And another.

Then he felt two strong hands on either side grab his arms and hold him. He struggled, but they were too strong.

They pulled him to the ground onto his knees.

He could feel and hear the hot breath of all of them on him. He could feel they were naked and aroused.

He felt another slap on his face, and a stinging leather flog on his back and buttocks.

He felt the first warrior mount his back.

He could swear it felt like Goliath’s own grip on him. There were no words from the giants, only grunts of animal lust all around. They were like a pack of wild dogs.

He winced in pain as he was violently penetrated.

It was only the first of six violations that would complete his initiation that evening into the sacred brotherhood of the Sons of Rapha.

              • • • • •

When Ittai escaped the clutches of Ishbi and Goliath in the desert, he didn’t go back to Gath. He just kept running deeper into the desert. He was never going back to Gath. He was running away forever. Something inside him had changed.

He stopped and built a fire in the open to warm himself in the desert cold.

He had always felt like an outsider with his own people. A half-breed that did not fit into any group. Actually, he was a half-breed of half-breeds, since giants were already hybrid creatures of heavenly and earthly union.

He believed he was of Nephilim descent, but his oddity made him an object of ridicule. He was ostracized by normal humans because of his extra fingers and toes, and excluded by the Rephaim because of his small size. His mother had died in childbirth so he blamed himself for that tragedy as well.

He had been called “runt” one too many times. He had been rejected by everyone for too long. In fact, the only person in the whole world who did accept him was Lahmi. But when Ittai had been rejected by the Sons of Rapha and Lahmi was accepted by them, Ittai felt that it was the final insult to who he was. He could never overcome his small size with the Rephaim, he could never overcome his odd mutation with the humans. And now his only friend in the world had left him behind because of these insurmountable barriers.

He put his dagger at the edge of the fire, with its blade sticking into the coals.

He wanted to get away from it all; away from the world of rejection; away from the humans who feared him as a freak of nature; away from the giants who mocked him as less than Rephaim.

And he knew just what he was going to do.

He looked up at the night sky. The brilliance of the gods shone down upon him. In his culture, the stars were equated with the gods, and so their influence as well. Was his destiny really controlled by them? If so, then let them stop him now.

He pulled out his dagger from the burning coals of the fire.

He knelt down in front of a rock. It struck him how like an altar it was; a flat top, almost square.

He prayed to Dagon, “Forgive me, Lord of Storm, but you give me no other choice. I will not live this way.”

He placed his hand on the stone and spread out his six fingers. He placed the blade on his smallest digit on the outside.

Then he cut down on the finger and sliced it off. The pain shot through his arm with ferocity.

He was tough. He growled, but he did not cry. His eyes were filled with hatred for everything that mocked him.

He held the red hot blade against the lesion to cauterize the wound.

The odor of his sizzling flesh assured him he would not bleed to death.

He ripped a piece of his tunic and wrapped it around the mutilated hand.

He saw the little stubble of a finger laying on the rock, and brushed it off with cavalier contempt. If he could not be a Son of Rapha, if he could not be respected as a descendent of the Nephilim, then he would cut off the offending members that marked his connection to that bloodline, the members that mocked him most.

He then placed his feet, one at a time on the rock and cut off each outer toe with the heated blade and wrapped each foot in a bandage as well.

Lastly, he switched the glowing blade to his wounded hand and cut off the sixth digit of his right hand. By now, the pain was so great he almost passed out. But Ittai had an iron will and would never give up or give in. Through sheer determination he kept himself conscious and coherent.

He wrapped his last hand awkwardly with a bandage. Now he would no longer be mocked as a stunted Rapha. He would not seek the acceptance of the cruel Philistines any longer. He would start all over in a place where people would think he was a human and treat him with dignity.

He was within a short distance of his goal. He had walked twenty miles through the desert and was just outside a city.

It was Mizpah of Israel.

The small town of Mizpah was the site of several important moments in Israel’s history. In her ancient past, it was where the patriarch Jacob had made a covenant with Laban and set up a pillar of memorial. It was a rallying point where Israel gathered together against the tribe of Benjamin in the early era of the Judges over Israel. In more recent days, the seer Samuel first called all Israel to come to that place and pray in light of the Philistine threat, upon which their god thundered against the Philistines from heaven and pushed them back permanently.

When Ittai first arrived in the town, he was taken in by the blacksmith, Micah ben Jonathan, a Kenizzite. Because of the Philistine monopoly on blacksmithing, such craftsmen were rare and often misunderstood among the Israelites. But the Kenizzites were originally a gentile tribe with smithing background. Micah was a simple man who worked hard and stayed out of people’s way. Because of his own orphan-like gentile status, he had a special compassion for orphans of all kinds. When he found Ittai begging in the streets, he could see there was something special in this lad. He took him home to care for him.

When Micah noticed Ittai’s wounds he didn’t ask questions. He was not even aware of what they represented. He didn’t care what happened in the small boy’s past, he only wanted to give him a future
.

After his wounds healed, Ittai showed great promise in blacksmithing. He already had a knowledge of it from previous apprenticeship. In fact, Ittai even taught Micah some important principles since Israelite skill in blacksmithing was many years behind that of the Philistines.

Ittai showed great interest in smithing weapons. His extraordinary strength lent itself well to the physically demanding craft. Micah allowed him to spend a part of each day testing and experimenting at making swords and the like.

One day, Ittai was looking through some old weapons that had been packed away in chests. At the bottom of one chest, he found a most unusual item.

He pulled out a strange-looking sword handle that stuck out of a leather case. But the case was not a long sheath as one would expect of a sword. Rather, it was about a foot square. It looked to Ittai as if it were just a handle that maybe led to a hammer or axe head inside the case. But that would not make any sense.

Ittai opened the sheath and pulled the handle out. A thin metallic blade ten feet long unraveled onto the floor like a whip. It was strange. It was durable metal, but flexible and razor-edged.

Curiosity caught Ittai. “What is this?” He was so absorbed, he didn’t realize that he spoke out loud.

“A whip sword.”

The words behind him made him turn. Micah had found him.

Ittai flushed with guilt. “I am sorry. I was only looking for inspiration.”

“And you found it,” smiled Micah. “It is a special sword passed down through generations from the original hands of Lamech ben Methuselah to Caleb ben Jephunneh, the mighty right hand of Joshua ben Nun. Caleb was a member of my tribe of Kenizzites, so that is how I inherited it.”

The names meant nothing to Ittai. He remained blank in the face. Micah smiled. Of course he would not know.

“Legend has it that it was forged of heavenly metal from the Garden of Eden on the mountain of God.”

Ittai’s eyes went wide with holy fear. He saw words written on the handle in old cuneiform. Micah had taught him to read.

“Why is it called Rahab?”

Micah said, “Rahab is the writhing sea serpent of chaos.”

Ittai held the weapon away from himself as if he was holding a dangerous snake.

Micah smiled. “It won’t bite you if you handle it correctly. The metal is flexible like a whip, but more durable than any metal known to man.”

Ittai asked, “How can there be such metal?”

“I told you, it is heavenly. It is said that Caleb was trained in the ancient battle technique of the archangels called the Way of the Karabu. They say he used this sword to vanquish the mighty sons of Anak: Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, and captured the city of Hebron.”

Ittai said, “It was used to slay giants?” Possibilities began to swirl in Ittai’s mind.

“Let me show you how it works,” said Micah.

He took the handle from Ittai. “Stand back. I’m not trained as well as Caleb.”

Micah found a log sticking up in the pile of wood by the furnace. He snapped the whip sword and it wrapped around the thick log and then cut it in two with ease.

Ittai gasped.

Micah said, “
That
is why it is called Rahab. In the wrong hands of evil, it could do much devastation.”

Micah handed the sword back to his adopted son. “I want you to have it.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Ittai, I believe you have a righteous heart. I do not believe your discovery of Rahab was happenstance. I think Yahweh ordained it.”

Ittai’s eyes began to tear up. He felt so unworthy. If his adoptive father knew his heart, he would not have called him righteous. On the other hand, he could think of a few giants he would like to slay with this weapon. He started to wriggle the blade like a charmed snake in his hands.

Micah said, “I will teach you how to use it. You do not want to accidentally cut off your own head.”

Ittai smiled.

Micah added, “And with that unusual strength of yours, you could do a lot of damage to an enemy.”

If he only knew how badly Ittai wanted that.

Ittai dropped the sword and hugged Micah ferociously. His gracious kindness toward the young man was incomprehensible.

Micah smiled through his own tears and hugged him back for all he was worth.