Day of War (20 page)

Eliam rolled over in the sand and let the sweat drip off the bridge of his nose. He hated the screaming of dying men. His foot burned terribly. Men scuffled and fought very close to him. Smoke? Was something burning? He was afraid to look up, but finally did. He saw no fire.
But something is burning because I can smell it.

Suddenly he wanted to run, straight away from this mountainside. He wanted to disappear into the forest and never feel another arrowhead sink into his foot again.

He sat up. There was the forest, nearby. All he had to do was run. He could reach the spring, he could—

There were louder shouts. He turned to the right and saw the Israelite line, blurry in the dust, pushing the Philistines back down the slope with the force of higher ground. Eliam coughed and blinked. The Israelites were pushing them back? They were advancing! Not possible.

The Philistines were pulling back to regroup, and the Israelite troops yelled and thumped their shields with their weapons. For the first time in many days, they sounded … exhilarated. He could
sense it in their faces and in their cries. He searched the field desperately to see what was causing it.

It was Jonathan, staggering back up the hill from behind the Philistine lines, dozens of enemy dead behind him.

David’s troops saw smoke on the horizon when they were still half a day away.

Some claimed it was a fire in the grasslands, started by herdsmen trying to clear bad ground or a carelessly tended campfire. But Benaiah knew exactly what it was, and through a fog of descending darkness in his mind he sprinted ahead.

This was just how he had come upon it before. He had approached from the Way of the Sea, weary but eager to see his neglected children and wife, and the smoke had appeared, and he had run, found the people crying, screaming, fires burning, and smoke filling doorways. He had burst through his door, and there in the corner was Sherizah, shaking, blood on the stones of his entry-way, no daughters.

And now Benaiah found himself staggering through the burned and broken gates of another city, and he found himself again shouting for Sherizah, calling for her as he stumbled down the alleys and corridors that led to his home. Every building had been burned.
There were no people anywhere, all were gone except for the corpses of a few Philistine men, older ones who’d been allowed to stay behind. The flames had died, but smoke poured from every opening and smoldering ash heap.

The door of Benaiah’s burned but still-standing home stood open as he ran up. He looked for the blood on the stones and realized that he had vomited all over his tunic. He threw aside his weapons, screamed for her, picking his way through his home, kicking away charred logs. Sherizah was not there.

He fell back through the doorway and lay in the dirt and ash of the street, gasping for breath. Around him, sounding muffled, were the sounds of the army searching the destroyed city of Ziklag for their loved ones. He heard no happy reunions, no shouts of joy. Only the hollow yells of men in despair.

Benaiah shouted to Yahweh then. He screamed curses and blasphemy and every angry thing he could think of. Twice this had come. Twice Yahweh had abandoned them.

He let his head roll, weak, feeling the wounds from the lion’s claws inflame with new agony, as if his body had been waiting for his worst moment to remind him he had been cut to pieces.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw his sword glint. He stood up and snatched it. He walked to the doorway, propped the hilt of the sword between the entry stones, and prepared to fall on the tip.

He felt the sword tip prick his chest as he leaned against it. His weight was not yet on it. Just a little harder, just a little further, and it would end. He would descend into Sheol with the others he had slain, the others who had been slain, to where his wife and children were. And even if it was nothing but darkness, at least he would have them to hold, and promise never to leave them again.

Benaiah leaned against the sword. Sweat fell from his brow and splashed on the blade.

It was as if something was holding him back.

He threw himself harder against the blade. The tip pierced his flesh, but not more than a fingerbreadth.

Something
was
holding him back. A hand. Benaiah looked behind him.

It was Keth.

“Do not do that yet, my friend. Come with me.”

Jonathan’s ears rang. He didn’t have the strength even to lift his face from the dirt at first, but as the ringing he heard resolved into laughter and shouting, he willed himself out of the haze and lifted his head up.

There were his men, all of them, formed into rows across the mountainside, looking away from where he lay near the edge of the forest. A man was clapping his back, and he looked up. Gareb.

His old armor bearer said, “That was foolish! The most foolish thing I have ever seen, sir. Look at the mess you got us into. The Philistines are reforming their ranks, making them stronger, and they’re going to come with more precision this time.”

Jonathan looked down the hill and saw that Gareb’s words were true. Leaders of companies and squads were replenishing their ranks with fresh reinforcements and new weapons. What Jonathan had done was indeed foolish beyond compare, for the leader of an army. The commander is never supposed to leave the place where he can best control his troops. Flying through the enemy lines like a
hero only caused massed confusion. They would pay for his stupidity and probably lose the flank.

He sat up and began to tighten his leather. He needed to reassume control and enforce order. There would be no fresh reinforcements to fill their own lines.

Gareb, still watching him, said in a lower voice so that no one else would hear him, “It
was
foolish, sir. Violated every law of command and training—and it was exactly what we needed.”

Jonathan looked up at his friend and saw him smiling. The shouts of the men all around him kept repeating the regimental war cry: “Perhaps Yahweh will be with us! Perhaps Yahweh will be with us!”

Perhaps Yahweh
would
be with them.
As long as we are with Yahweh.

He looked at his men. They were
warriors.
They were here, sticks and all. They had not deserted. And he would not desert them.

He got to his feet and raised his sword, and the cries grew even louder. There was fire there now. He had lit it. They may not win the day, but at least there was fire.

Perhaps Yahweh will be with us.

Jonathan, arms still raised, pushed once more through the ranks of Israelites and began to walk the length of the front. He was exposing himself to archery fire, but he did not care. The Philistines had pulled back everywhere, reforming all of their ranks, not only the ones decimated by his charge, so the entire line of Israel’s army was free of battle for the moment.

The men shouted, affirming him, and he began to run down the ranks, slapping their faces and pounding them on their chests. The war cry never let up, and while the Philistines reformed their ranks, Jonathan reached the end of his line and shouted to the men under his brother Abinadab’s command. Abinadab and his soldiers waved and cheered him on as well, so he kept running, harder, shouting until he was nearly hoarse. The men returned his
shouts, and the sound was more beautiful than anything he had ever imagined. In the midst of blood and death, he saw beauty in their ugly faces.

He leaped over fallen warriors and slipped on bloody rocks, but he kept running because they loved it. He laughed and ran until he reached the ranks of his brother Malchi-shua, who also rallied his men to shouting.

Then Jonathan turned and moved back to the center of the mountainside at the front of the entire Israelite army and turned toward the Philistines, holding out his spear. He knew there were good fighters down the slope, but not like his own. He loved these men and felt the burning of tears in his eyes.

The Philistines raised their own weapons and yelled, waiting like leashed animals to be released by their commanding officers. Jonathan spat toward them in hot anger. He turned and looked back over his army.

And then he saw his father.

The tall form of Saul was brooding on a rock far behind the lines. He was alone, watching his army. As the men shouted and gave their regimental war cries and pleaded for another chance to fight, Jonathan watched his father.

The twisting in his gut returned, and he looked away, trying all over again to forget the desert.

The men were rallying, and Eliam dared to hope that they might make it out of this after all.

He trudged back up the mountain toward the water tent. The arrow in his foot seared him with every step, but he kept moving. If those men could rally, so could he. But he was very tired, and the foot hurt terribly, and after a few steps, he had to kneel.

The sun was now approaching the edge of the Gilboa range behind them; it would soon go down. The sky was becoming more amber as the day wore on. Eliam watched it, listening as the void behind him filled with men’s screams.

His head felt light. The wound in his foot bit at him fiercely. He realized that blood loss was finally taking its toll. His foot didn’t look as if it was bleeding excessively, but looking back along the path he’d just followed, he saw a steady red drip within each footprint. It was an hour or so since he’d been wounded. Plenty of time to lose enough blood to pass out.

After what felt like an entire generation had passed, he reached the water tent and called out, but no one was there. Up the hill, far away, a boy was running. Coward, Eliam thought. He dipped the skin into the water and began the return toward the lines, hands stinging and raw.

The battle was beginning again. The Philistine ranks were now moving in a blunt formation. Eliam crawled up on the rock he had climbed earlier to get a better view.

The enemy soldiers now moved in many columns, one after the other, advancing toward the center of the Israelite lines. Heavy infantry with pikes and shields led the way, followed by lighter infantrymen with smaller swords, followed at last by the archers. There were no chariots or cavalrymen to be seen.

The formation continued to grow in mass until it was beyond counting, and the left and right flanks of the Philistine army seemed to disappear in the failing light. Behind the massed assault, shaped like an enormous spearhead, the thousands of reserve troops were forming another sweeping line. He couldn’t understand what they were doing, but knew that the Israelites’ situation had become more urgent. Israel’s officers began sending messengers and aides to different portions of the lines.

He saw Jonathan dart back through the Israelite lines, shouting
orders. The men at the far ends of the Israelite ranks didn’t immediately react to the new Philistine movements. Word took awhile to reach the flank ends, especially when no one was watching the signal garments or listening to the ram’s horn call. It was only when the first of the Philistines reached the front ranks of Israel that the men on the sides moved into position. The Israelite commanders maintained a line of soldiers on the left and the right, but they hurried their secondary ranks toward the center of the line, behind the point targeted by the Philistine blunt strike.

Eliam tried to gather it in, but so many things were happening at once that he was unable to comprehend any of it. Then the dust and screaming rose in clouds once more. The attack had begun again. He could see nothing more.

With his head swimming from blood loss, he half fell off the rock and made his way back to the battle.

The battle had started to shift in intensity after Jonathan’s surprise attack. Gareb watched their men surging forward into the Philistine ranks, darting effectively behind the small boulders and ditches on the hillside, a type of fighting they were accustomed to and good at. The lowland-dwelling Philistines, on the other hand, were unable to gain solid footing on the steep mountainside.

Then he saw the Philistine chariots, out on the plains, suddenly burst into movement. Dust clouds rose as the horses pulled their riders swiftly east, converging on a wide opening on the eastern slopes of the mountains.

Gareb could only stare hopelessly as their chances at victory began to flicker out.

Jonathan saw that all was lost. One moment there had been jubilant war cries and hope, and now there was nothing but the inevitability of catastrophic defeat.

The fighting had spread out across Gilboa all the way to the eastern slopes, where the ground was more level and broad. Jonathan and the other commanders had not realized that the Philistines had simply been drawing them to where the Philistines’ chariots could finally be used in the attack.

There would be no getting out of this today. Yahweh had willed it.

His eyes sought out Gareb, still carrying instructions to their flanks. Gareb caught Jonathan’s eye and read his intent. They looked at each other silently for a moment while shouts and clanging swarmed the air around them.

“Gareb,” he shouted, “I must do this!”

Gareb did not reply, only looked back at the Philistine chariots charging up the mountain on their left. He started walking toward Jonathan.

Jonathan shouted again. “I need to hit their flank and delay them! If our army goes down, escape and find David!”

“David? I will die before that!”

“Honor my orders!”

Gareb kept staring. Jonathan felt the anger ebb as he looked at his old friend. The two men had drawn closer together as they talked, and now Jonathan lowered his voice. “Only he can save the nation from this, and he will need your help. Yahweh is with him. Do it for me.”

Gareb looked as though he had been speared. Jonathan nodded once and then turned and ran, unable to look back at his friend. Both men knew what was coming now.

Jonathan sprinted toward the far left flank. The crash of metal told him that the tip of the Philistine formation had struck Israel once more.

He shouted encouragement to the men and urged them forward. When he reached the far side of the mountain field, he stopped a squad moving in from the flank and asked them where his brother Abinadab was. A young man pointed up the slope, and Jonathan spotted his brother, directing the reforming of the Israelite lines. Jonathan ran to him and tugged his arm. “Come with me.”

Abinadab nodded, told his armor bearer to direct the fight in Abinadab’s absence, and followed Jonathan as he flew along the rocky slope across the rear of the Israelite lines. As they ran, Jonathan to the left, the Philistine chariots were almost all the way up the slope and ready to crush their flank.

He collided with a boy stumbling down the slope, and both of them crashed to the ground. It was Eliam. “Are you all right?” Jonathan asked.

Eliam nodded, eyes blurry and unfocused.

Jonathan saw the blood on his foot. “Get to a physician immediately.”

Eliam looked back at him, confused, and then Jonathan remembered that there were no more physicians. They had left for David’s army.

Jonathan pulled the boy to his feet and gripped Eliam’s arm. “Be strong.” He held Eliam’s arm a moment longer, then motioned for Abinadab to follow.

Malchi-shua, their other brother, was below them, trying to reform the thinning ranks of the center. He saw them and sprinted up to them.

Jonathan knelt with both men, all of them panting and sweating, each far beyond the limits of his body. Jonathan picked out a group of small stones from the ground and laid them out in the formation of the battlefield.

“I will be in front,” he said, pointing to the stones, “and we will rush down the left flank, in full view of the men. Make sure they
see you. When we hit the Philistine side, we will try to isolate their archers and infantry from the chariots.”

Abinadab and Malchi-shua looked at the rocks and said nothing.

Jonathan was irritated. “Well? Do you understand?”

“You have done this sort of thing before, brother. We have not,” said Abinadab. He had the height of their father, and Malchi-shua had the face. As boys, they had teased Jonathan because he more resembled their mother, and they claimed that he was sired by another. Happier days, long gone now.

Jonathan saw the defeat in their faces and let his shoulder sag a bit. The line was still holding beneath them and the reinforcements from the flanks were converging successfully to the center, but it was only a matter of time until the chariots overwhelmed them and broke through their line, and when that happened, it would all be over soon.

“We will not live through the day, you both know that. Neither will our father. Yahweh has ordained it. But many of our men will. And our men must fight again one day. We must show them what courage is.”

His voice wavered, and his brothers looked away. They had never seen him so emotional. He wiped his face and blinked, then shook his head to regain his focus. Though the sun was now hidden behind the hills, there was sweat pouring from his face, burning the corners of his eyes.

Malchi-shua, who had been looking furtively down the mountain at the battle, said, “I am not leaving our father’s side. Yahweh be with you both, but I cannot join you.”

Jonathan nodded. He had forgotten about his father in the past hour. How was that possible? Was their father of so little value in the battle? Jonathan had not seen him since that brief glimpse earlier, and he had no guess as to where he might be now. If Jonathan was to die, then let him die before he saw his father again.

Malchi-shua gripped his hand, did the same with Abinadab, and then ran toward the fray. Jonathan was overcome with sorrow at the last glimpse of his brother, then pushed it away again. He looked at Abinadab. “Are you with me?”

“Until the end.”

He meant it. There was no scorn or resentment. Neither Malchi-shua nor Abinadab had been close to their older brother through the years, resentful that Jonathan always seemed foremost in the people’s minds. But here there was none of that. Here they were two brothers who loved each other, regretting how petty their past arguments had been. Jonathan let the moment linger longer than he should have.

Then he rose with Abinadab after him. After adjusting his grip on his sword and asking if Abinadab had a worthy enough blade himself, he ran down the mountainside yet again that day.

Gareb thrust his sword forward, pulled it back, then thrust it again into the first face he saw emerge through the opening in the line. Someone screamed next to him, a lance in his belly, and Gareb jerked away from his own target and caught the falling soldier. Dust and sand flew around him.