“This might not be a place for a woman, but it is a place for a queen,” I reminded him.
A mix of emotions crossed Kadesh’s face when I galloped toward him. “You should be safely at the palace with Aunt Naomi and the rest of the family,” he said. “Please go. I can hardly stand to see you out here with three armies only a league’s distance before us.”
“Your army needs to see us together first. I will ride out with you. You are their king, and I am their future queen. They need to see our confidence and our loyalty to them and to each other. This war is only because of me and I won’t sit inside the palace and wait—not when they are fighting and dying for me.”
The outraged lines on his face finally softened. “Fall into place beside me.”
All around us, the troops were moving into formation. Archers, foot soldiers, and then the cavalry made up of the Edomites and Basim’s men. The men wore full gear, their waists heavy with swords, daggers, and slings.
Kadesh and I sat before the army and he raised his voice. “My soldiers, my countrymen!” he shouted above the sound of the animals pawing at the ground. “We are your king and queen of Sariba! We stand together as one. We honor you for the loyalty and obedience you have shown to us. Go forth with courage and conviction. Remember that you are defending your wives, your children, and your homes from an enemy who would see every last one of you dead. They would steal your city, your shops and businesses, and farms and lands. They would rule over you and subject you to slavery and subjugation. Never doubt your right to live here peacefully. Never doubt our love and gratitude for you. We are not only your king and queen but we are your servants in life and in death.”
The combined armies cheered his words, and then as one body, we turned our animals to face the open desert. Up ahead, the tents of Horeb loomed. The scouts had already seen us, and Horeb’s troops were assembling. We wouldn’t know their actual numbers after being ill from the poison until we were upon them.
Fear roiled in my gut. I couldn’t seem to catch a decent breath.
“You have no armor, Jayden,” Kadesh reminded me. “You will not be on the front lines. After we charge forward swing around and return home at once.”
“I’ll wait for you on the ramparts, my king,” I told him. “My love.”
Kadesh pulled me in for a fervent, hard kiss and Sariba’s troops cheered again, along with spurts of laughter.
Silence descended again just as quickly. The morning air stilled while the early sun poured down upon our heads.
There was a quick intake of breath, and then Kadesh’s voice roared the order to charge.
Instantly, the valley turned into a cloud of galloping horses and horrendous dust.
“I can feel the hooves inside the earth,” I murmured aloud, and the sense of awe was overwhelming.
Sariba’s cavalry broke off into two groups, skirting the main army to flank Horeb while Kadesh’s archers stopped to set up their line, whipping out bows and their shields at the ready.
Screams rent the air as the first of the arrows were let loose, whizzing ferociously through the air and then thudding with precision into Horeb’s soldiers.
Horeb’s archers instantly launched a return volley, freezing me in place.
“My lady!” General Naham growled. “Get away now! Quickly!”
I tried to swallow but couldn’t even speak. Finally, I wrenched my gaze away from the battle and turned toward the city, its walls a mirage in the distance.
Jonah appeared at my side. “This way,” he added a bit more gently. “Our soldiers wear boiled-leather armor. They’ll survive. The fight will go on all day. And tomorrow. And the next day. Our task is to prevent it from lasting so many weeks nobody is left alive. And my task right now is to see you home in one piece.”
I wished I had leather or cloth armor under my tunic. I’d never been so vulnerable, but already, as I skirted the battlefield next to Jonah, men were sprawling on the earth in death. Swords glittered under the brittle summer sun, horses lying askew, taken down with their master still in the saddle. I bit down on my lip so hard I drew blood. Then I kicked the sides of my horse into a gallop.
Please, dear God, I prayed, head down over my saddle. Please let Kadesh come home to me.
When I approached the palace, I was shocked at the number of people pouring into the outer complex and grounds. Frightened women with their children, older boys threatening to go fight beside their fathers and uncles.
Everyone was unnerved. Stories murmured all around me about those who had died trying to escape. Ruthless deaths by Horeb’s army, intended to terrorize and demoralize Sariba. The brutality and mercilessness of it made me sick.
Thankfully, General Naham hadn’t left the city defenseless. Part of the army surrounded the city walls in case rogue fighters attempted to invade while our army was gone. But Horeb’s armies were larger, and leaving a contingency to defend the city shrunk Sariba’s army that much more.
Wearing the deep red dress, I was self-conscious at bringing attention to myself riding through the city streets. The citizens stopped their tasks to stare at me. Shop owners, potters and weavers, the farmers, and the women at the wells.
I was still a stranger to them, but murmuring accusations rolled past like angry waves. Most of them had never seen war in this secluded valley of frankincense. Whereas I had grown up with tribal skirmishes on an annual basis.
I skirted the palace gardens and hurried to the east doors, taking the steps two at a time. When I pulled down my white headscarf, the guards immediately let me in, and I practically ran down the halls to my bedroom suite.
The same guard that had been on duty that morning was still at the doors of my suite. He gave me a brief nod while I slipped inside.
Two pairs of eyes stared up at me. Tijah rose from her mending beside the window, questions on her lips while Jasmine froze in her bed-making.
“It is done,” I said quietly. “Our soldiers are gone to battle.”
While I changed out of my good dress and scrubbed the dust from my face, Jasmine made a motion of eating with her fingers and left to retrieve breakfast from the kitchens.
I wasn’t hungry, but not knowing what was going on at the battlefield gnawed at me.
Tijah fixed my hair and belted a sash around my dress. Then I spent the day pacing at Naomi’s suite, making idle conversation, and staring out the windows from each side of the room.
“Shall we take care of the queen’s quarters?” Aunt Naomi finally asked, worry in her eyes.
“I’m too distracted.” I rose from the couch and slipped my sandals back on. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Perhaps a nap would do you good?”
I shook my head. “My mind is a jumble of worries and I can’t sleep. I’m going to the parapet overlook.”
I took the corridor to the east corner and then the outer stairs up to the wall. Gulping in fresh air, I gripped the ledge while the city spread out below me like a jewel. The red-tiled roofs and meandering streets with hanging baskets of fresh flowers were deceptively calm.
At the northern gates, guards stood on top of the walls in the late afternoon sun, Sariba flags rippling in the hot breeze. My stomach turned upside down when I spotted the army returning far in the distance.
A noise came from behind me and when I turned, Uncle Josiah was coming up the parapet steps. He took my arm. “Come, Jayden, let us go greet our king and his men.”
We stood under the palace pavilion while the army of Sariba, including the Edomites and Basim’s soldiers, clopped down the main boulevard.
A fragile dusk fell over the city like a curtain. Lights began to flicker along the avenues and roads until the cry for the blackout was called and the lamps were quickly extinguished. There were no cheering crowds. War was not something Sariba rejoiced in or celebrated.
Clinging to Josiah’s arm, I watched the troops and horsemen head to the stables to relieve their animals. Then these good men would return home to em
brace their wives and children, fill their bellies with hot food, and then sleep before dawn arrived again.
Bringing up the rear, the royal flags fluttered.
“I can hardly bear watching this,” I said in a low voice. My eyes were dizzy and perspiration stained my neck.
“You must bear it, my lady,” Uncle Josiah said. “This and so much more if you are to be queen of this land. There will be long caravan trips when you don’t see Kadesh for months. Citizens who murmur against the royal family, poor crop years, and the encroaching sands of the desert to always fight back so it doesn’t overtake our frankincense and homes.”
“You frighten me, Uncle Josiah,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
“As queen you will be called on to do many hard things—and many wonderful things. From what Kadesh has told me, you are well acquainted with grief.”
I gazed at him in silence, a mutual understanding and respect growing between us. When I spotted Kadesh in his royal uniform, the colors dimmed by dust and grime, I said, “But I’ve also been very blessed.”
Picking up the hem of my dress, I ran down the stairs to the road. Briefly, I lost sight of Kadesh, but then he came into view again, surrounded by his guardsmen, the standard bearers bringing up the rear.
I choked down a sob and raced to his horse. “Kadesh!” I practically shrieked. Quickly, I swallowed my exuberance, knowing it didn’t become my position, but the soldiers hid their smiles and tipped their heads toward me in respect.
Kadesh gripped my hand so tight I thought he’d crush it, and then bent to kiss my palm. “Your hands are chapped and there are fresh blisters. What were you doing today?”
“Scrubbing shirts at the local washing hole,” I said, the teasing coming out so easily I surprised myself. I didn’t want him to worry about me while he was fighting for the survival of his people.
He raised an eyebrow and I barely recognized him under the grime. “My scouts tell me that well over three hundred of Horeb’s men were ill in their tents. Stricken by a strange flu.”
I lifted my chin, suppressing a smile. We were eye to eye.
“Do you know anything about that, my queen?” he teased.
I lifted my shoulders in mock ignorance. “Our foreign water must not agree with them.”
Kadesh let out a sharp laugh. “You clever girl,” he murmured with admiration.
“Some soldiers don’t know how to keep a secret. Kadesh,” I added, “I want to fight with you tomorrow. Which means I need armor.”
“The Assyrians will tear you to shreds in minutes, Jayden. I forbid you.”
“But I want to be useful.”
“You don’t think you’ve been useful? I have Basim and an extra fifty extraordinary horsemen because of you. And over the past two days, hundreds of Horeb’s men have been vomiting in their tents, or are now being buried in a mass grave. You are ruthless, my future queen.”
Despite the hint of macabre humor, it brought me no pleasure to know that Jonah and I had poisoned so many men. My only consolation was knowing that these foreign soldiers were most likely unmarried men without wives and children. Whereas the men of Sariba left widows and orphans.
The ugliness of battle was strewn with dead and dying men. I imagine the grieving homes, the moans and tears of loss tonight.
Pain swam in Kadesh’s face. He didn’t say it, but Sariba had lost too many men today. I placed my hands against his cheeks and lifted my face to kiss him despite the grime all over him. “After you take care of your horse,” I said quietly, “come inside for dinner and rest before you fall over faint.”
“Am I a terrible king coming home to my own bed each night?” Kadesh asked. “We’ve left the rest of our army on the desert to camp tonight between the frankincense groves and the battlefield. It’s too risky to leave the area open for Horeb’s scouts and spies to infiltrate the temple grounds. Perhaps an even greater risk is if Horeb dispatches small envoys to slip into our forest to have them hide, waiting for an opportunity to scale the walls of the city and commit brutal acts against our citizens.”
I nodded gravely in agreement. “It’s better to have our army in between the city and the enemy.”
Even so, I wouldn’t doubt any sort of trickery from Horeb until he knew that every citizen of Sariba was dead or had bowed prostrate to the ground in obeisance to him as King of Sariba.
26
On the second day of battle, I found myself once more taking care of the personal belongings of a family member who had suddenly and tragically died in the last two weeks.
Naomi and I spent the morning organizing the Queen of Sheba’s possessions and writing letters of condolences to the Sa’ba royal family. Letters that would be sent with Kadesh’s letters when he had time to compose them.
We burned the queen’s filthy traveling clothes and the bloodstained dress she’d been wearing when Aliyah murdered her at the summer solstice.
The queen had brought no personal maids with her, but her soldiers helped us lift and carry the trunks, their faces solemn, their demeanors tragically bereft. I sensed a deep abiding guilt underneath their heartache, as if they were responsible for bringing the queen to Sariba only to watch her executed.
I had no way of comforting them or telling them anything differently, but I knew their pain well; it was too close to my own.
Naomi had her scribe make a list of the few possessions, clothing, and weapons while we ordered her traveling chests re-packed. In reality, for the great queen she was, she had brought very little with her.
It had been a speedy and secretive journey to get here before the first battle began. She had traveled disguised as a man with her soldiers masquerading as a small pack of desert hunters. Knowing Horeb’s armies were somewhere on the desert, the queen had felt it imperative to travel incognito and had miraculously avoided Horeb by traveling the last few days during the night. But as an ally and cousin of the royal family, it was a trek she was more familiar with than most who found themselves wandering the desolate terrain that skirted the empty sands.
The queen’s camels and horses were being taken care of in the palace stables for the soldiers’ return trip. Of course, Kadesh would make sure her caravan and envoy back to Sa’ba was worthy of a queen.
“Oh, that you had never come here,” I groaned when I saw the small keepsakes she had brought with her from her children. A heart-shaped stone painted with flowers. A knotted string necklace with dried flowers from her homeland.
I laid the childlike treasures in our finest linen parchment and tied them with string, then laid them on top of the trunk before the lid was closed and locked.
“As far as we can tell, all is accounted for,” Naomi said at last, dismissing the scribe.
By midafternoon, I was standing at the window of my room, straining my eyes toward the foothills of the mountains, catching sight of distant clouds of dust where the man I loved was locked in a fierce battle for the survival of our beloved country. A battle for his life, the life of his men, and the lives of every Sariba citizen.
My throat was dry, my eyes wide, because I could not cry anymore. It would be another terrible day of fighting, and I determined that I couldn’t give in to desolation, not when the people around me needed me to be strong.
Before packing the queen’s possessions, I’d spent the morning distracting my handmaids and Sahmril with stories about our baby camels and the details of our desert weddings, especially my cousin Hakak’s beautiful wedding more than a year ago. I thought about the lost family of my tribe, relatives I would probably never see again.
A sudden, acute ache for my cousins—their smiles and laughter, the jokes and sewing nights, the evenings of dancing and gossip were gone forever. I could picture their faces. I remembered their beauty and generosity and the one-time loyalty.
Horeb had stolen them from me, too.
At the moment, I not only missed my mother, but I was desperate to hold the memories of my grandmother, Seraiah, close. I wish
ed she were here to comfort me and my father. To rock Sahmril in her arms. To tell me stories of my father as a boy and the mischief he got into. For all Seraiah’s wit and snapping black eyes, her son had turned into a stoic, mournful man, bereft of his land, his country, and the familial ties of the royal family of the Nephish.
A knock sounded at the door, and I started.
Aunt Naomi stood there, holding out her hands to me. “It’s time, Jayden.”
“I know,” I said, sighing deeply. “I’m supposed to be an adult, but I wish I could crawl back under the bed covers and pretend that none of this was happening. I wish I could remember the queen as she was in all her beauty and wisdom.”
“Taking care of her possessions is part of remembering her,” Naomi told me, tugging me away from the window. “It’s how we show her respect and love.”
Reluctantly, I pushed away from the window ledge, wanting to watch and wait for Kadesh. “The melancholy weighs at me. The sickening waste of lives. The senselessness. All because of me. Perhaps I should have made different choices.”
Fiercely, Naomi gathered me into her arms. “Your choices weren’t wrong. They were yours to make. You have a right to happiness and peace as does everyone. Your choice never forced Horeb or Aliyah to make theirs. But they did, and now their choices force all of us to live with terrible consequences—and choices we should not have had to make.”
“But the consequences are no less hard to bear,” I said.
“That is certain,” Naomi agreed sadly. “Now let’s go pay our final respects to the great Queen of Sa’ba.”
The queen’s soldiers stood at attention outside the room where her body lay in state. She would have no formal embalming. None of her queenly robes, crown, and jewels that she deserved.
Waves of anger pulsed over me at her death. Such a senseless, incomparable tragedy. Such a waste of a noble ruler. A woman who had helped to keep the peace of the desert kingdoms after her own parents’ sad lives.
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