Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (29 page)

He took a small breath; he didn’t know how to handle her.

Zadok entered Barak’s pavilion first and moved aside to stand by the door of the tent, tall and glowering, the light from Barak’s small fire playing off the hard, unforgiving edges of his face. A moment later Devora swept in with a swish of her long, travel-stained white dress and fury in her eyes.

The
navi
did not do anything Barak might have expected of a woman entering his tent. Devora did not kneel before him on the rug nor did she sit. She strode across the tent, giving him hardly time to lean back from the intrusion before her hand whipped across his face, striking him hard enough to black his vision for an instant.

He caught her wrist even as she drew it back, held it tightly. Her eyes were dark as the midnight at the bottom of a lake.

“Release the
navi
’s hand.” A growl from Zadok at the door of the tent.

Breathing hard, his pulse pounding in his temples, Barak gazed into those midnight eyes a moment before glancing past Devora to see the nazarite standing like a tower, filling even the war-leader’s voluminous pavilion. Barak’s own growl was deep in his throat. But this was the
navi
. She was
kadosh
. Forbidden to touch her. He let go of Devora’s hand, his teeth bared from the effort of holding in his rage. His cheek stung.

“How
dare
you,” the
navi
hissed, standing before him. “Israel
needs
you. How
dare
you betray the Covenant so.”

He rose slowly to his feet, breathing deep. “Where is Nimri?” he growled.

“Dealt with.” Devora nearly spat the words, and the threat in them took Barak aback. His anger flickered down like a fire growing cold; he was bewildered. What had the
navi
done to that belligerent herdsman of Naphtali tribe? What
could
the
navi
do?

“Give one reason, one, why I shouldn’t deal with you likewise.” Though Devora’s head barely came to Barak’s chin, her presence filled the tent. “God is not an idol of wood you can cart about, wine-drinker. You think God is a—a weapon for your hand!” Her face was flushed with fury, those eyes darker by the moment. “But you are a weapon in
God
’s hand, Barak!”

He bristled. He would
not
be upbraided by this woman, like some boy come late to dinner with unwashed hands. “I am no god’s weapon and no man’s,” he growled. “I am a vintner who has been eleven days from my vineyard while dead prowl about it, and I fear for the harvest.” He lifted his hand when she started to speak, and to his surprise she stopped and listened, though her eyes flashed. “I do want the Ark. I see it isn’t coming.” For some reason he found himself needing to persuade her. His voice had an edge to it. “Some of the men in this camp want to thieve our few horses and ride after the dead now, this night, and be done with it. Men of Omri’s sort. Others wish to slip away when I’m not looking. It is only by a
hair
that I hold this raid together,
navi
!” He
was shouting now but could not stop. “These men
need
an Ark. Something holy, something
kadosh
, something they can keep their eyes on, that will tell them where they are supposed to stand and where they are supposed to walk, in what direction, whether to fight or flee. Something they will trust more than they trust me. They need an Ark. I sent Nimri for it—” He took a breath. “I had little time, and I hoped he would deal with the high priest in my stead—”

“Nimri
slew
the high priest.”

A silence brittle enough for a single word to shatter. For several moments, no word did. Barak’s face went completely white. The tent seemed to tilt toward him, and he could hear every beat of his heart.

Unthinkable.

He fought to breathe.

“I—did not mean that it should come to that,” he whispered.

The silence stretched until it was taut and tense. Devora’s face grew colder. Zadok loomed by the door of the pavilion with his arms folded across his chest, like some monument in fertile lands on the other side of the desert. Their eyes were on Barak with an intensity that shook him. His palms were sweaty, his throat too tight for words.

The
high priest
. Slain.

Nimri—what had he done? A scream was rising somewhere in the back of his mind.

“You’re more heathen than Hebrew,” Devora said at last. Her voice was like the winter wind through a door. She turned with a dismissiveness to her movements, as though she had no more time to waste with him. Zadok drew aside the tent flap and preceded her, and in a moment she was gone and the tent was too full of thunderous silence. Barak swayed on his feet.

The high priest was
dead
. The blight in Barak’s vineyard appeared vividly before his heart. He had taken up the spear,
pleading with God to shelter his vineyard while he defended the vineyards of other men. What wrath had that ass Nimri brought down on them all? Barak’s covenant with God was already a fragile, provisional thing.

He burst into motion, sprang from his tent. Outside, dark was falling.

“Navi!”

She was already on horseback, with a young Canaanite in the saddle before her. Zadok was mounting his black gelding. Men stood at the egresses of nearby tents, watching with wide eyes.

“You can’t leave!” Barak shouted, his voice pitched in a way that shamed him. “The men—”

“I am not leaving.” She nodded toward the lake. “I am riding to that settlement.”

Barak shook his head. “Not alone—”

“God has something to show me there. There was a vision as we came down from the hills.” She nudged Shomar forward, turning her head enough that Barak could hear her speak over her shoulder, though she did not look at him. “There’s something in the cedar houses I need to see.”

Barak glanced at the lake and the silent houses. “I’ll get men.”

“I’ll hear God better without them.” She and Zadok spurred their horses to a trot.

Aghast, Barak called to the men outside their tents. “Stop them!”

Several men sprang before the horses. Even as they did, Devora unsheathed Mishpat and held the blade ready at her side, where it shone in the starlight like an invitation to death. Clean and white and unanswerable as an act of God. Barak gasped, for the blade was clearly iron, not bronze. Once only in his life had Barak ben Abinoam seen with his own eyes an implement of iron; the heathen champion who’d led the coastal raid Barak had repelled years ago had carried such a blade, and it had cut through the
bronze shields of Barak’s men as easily as if Barak were defending his vineyard and theirs with only sticks of wood—as though a heathen not-god lived within the metal, thirsting with the need to sever and kill.

Whether at the sword or the oncoming of the horses or the fury naked in the
navi
’s eyes, the men fell back. The
navi
and the nazarite sent their horses into a brisk canter. In a moment they were gone from the camp, riding out toward the shore.

“
Damn it!
” Barak yelled. “Omri, Laban!” The war leaders were already near, drawn by the shouts and the hoofbeats, and they ran toward him. “You each gather up ten men, your best. Follow me!” Barak shouted the words as he ran for his own horse. As he saddled Ager and then leapt astride, his heart pounded fiercely. Women and God always brought trouble to a man’s house. This woman and her God more than most. “
Ya!
” he roared, wresting Ager’s head up and digging in his knees.

D
EVORA AND
Zadok had a good start, and Barak didn’t catch up to them until their steeds had carried them into the town, past the settlement’s cistern and up a long street between two-story houses of cedar and fir. No voices called out from the houses, either to greet or challenge these strangers in their town. Nor did Barak call out to the houses. The gaping holes of the upper-story windows opened on lightless rooms as dark as though God had never created light.
That
kind of dark.

Fears rose in Barak’s mind that he hadn’t shivered under since he was a small boy—when he’d cry out for his mother, and her soft words would drive away the unclean, lurching things with which his imagination had peopled the night. His mother was not here now. And the irremediable dark within these deserted houses might conceal anything. Bodies, whether still or in motion. Bodies rising from the floor, mouths open and hungering, silently
approaching, arms outreached to grab at him. His blood was loud in his ears, loud and demanding as God’s voice at Har Sinai. It took everything in him not to turn his horse and bolt from this strange town.

But there was no scent of death. Just stillness.

There was no sound of hooves behind him; the other men he’d called for were no doubt riding to catch up but hadn’t yet reached the settlement. He glanced down at his saddlebag. There was a curved bulge where he’d packed the shofar he carried. If he needed it. He made the sign against evil quickly with his left hand. He had lost the Ark; he intended to keep at least the
navi
.

Barak caught up with her, his horse wheezing, even as Devora slid from her own steed’s back where she and Zadok had halted outside a tumbled ruin of rafters and soot. One of those houses of cedar—a very great one—had burned to the ground; heaps of charred wood rose from the ashes the way lost kin rise from the mists in our dreams, fragments of our past demanding attention. There was no smoke rising from the cinders and no glow of embers—the fire must have been out a few days—but the scent of burned wood remained thick in the air.

Barak pulled Ager up before the ruin, a few steps from Devora. “What are you doing?” he whispered fiercely, glaring down at the
navi
, ignoring the tall nazarite who stood by her. “There could be dead here.”

“There most likely are.”

“Then what are you doing here,
navi
, without more men?”

Devora glanced at him, her eyes still dark with anger.

Zadok’s voice was a cold challenge in the dark. “If the
navi
says there is something we must see here, then there is something we must see.”

Devora glanced at the nazarite. “Even if there wasn’t,” she said quietly, “we must find an herbalist, or her supplies. For the girl.”

Barak gave the Canaanite an uneasy glance. The girl was gazing about, frowning as though looking for something she might recognize. Her eyes were a little glazed, and she was very pale. With a start, Barak realized she was ill with fever.

“That girl,” he said hoarsely. “Is she—”

“It’s not that kind of fever,” Devora said. “But she has touched the dead.” With her gaze fixed on the charred ruin before them, the
navi
unstrapped a waterskin from the side of the saddle and handed it up to the girl. The Canaanite took the skin and held it, but didn’t drink.

“Wait for my men,” Barak said.

“Are you afraid, Barak?” An edge to the
navi
’s voice.

He didn’t know how to answer that. Admit his fear to a woman? He turned his head and spat on the hard-packed dirt of the street.

“So am I,” the
navi
said. “Let’s take a look.” For a moment the
navi
turned her attention to her horse. The gelding’s eyes were showing their whites, and Devora scratched under his chin a moment. The gelding whickered softly, but his eyes stayed round with fear. Leaning in, Devora whispered in the horse’s ear. Then she stepped away from her horse, with Mishpat unsheathed at her side.

“Zadok, watch over the girl, please.”

“Your will,
navi
.”

Devora left her horse, and the nazarite sat his with an uneasy look that Barak could well understand. As the
navi
walked slowly to the ruin, Barak looked at the charred timbers, then his gaze darted to the houses at either side, which were solid and intact. Only one house had burned. There must have been no wind. Still, a fire in an encampment or a town was a furious thing; there must have been men here to put the fire out before it devoured the other homes. But how had they salvaged nothing of this one house yet kept it from the others? It was as though this one house had been struck by a
firebolt of divine judgment from the sky, or as though the people had stood about it with water and blankets, keeping the fire contained. Watching it burn. It made no sense.
Nothing
about this town made any sense. He had been here before, twice, years ago. Once when he met Hadassah as she drew water from the town’s cistern, once when he came to speak with the town’s elders at the gate, during the worst raids from the Sea People. It had been a grim settlement but a thriving one. Now these silent houses—it was as though the settlement he knew had never existed. Or as though he were no longer even walking in the waking world—as though somehow he had ridden Ager right into the dream country. He shivered.

“That fire was not accidental.” Devora kept her voice low. “Look. There’s wood piled against the wall that fell, and fragments of a broken oil jar.”

Barak gave a start and took a closer look at the ruined structure. Yes, he could see the woodpile now—a great heap of embers and charred ends of boards, hidden half from sight under the collapsed wall. And a few pottery shards in the ash. He glanced at Devora, noting the confidence and rigid certainty of her posture, the cold in her face.
She sees what others do not
—that’s what was whispered of her in the land.
She finds justice; the defiler and the defiled cannot hide from her.