Joshua Valiant

by Brian Godawa

  Uriel smiled and whispered a prayer, “Yahweh, you are an amazing creator, the creatures you make. Now, please let me find another way in, thank you.”

  But as he turned and looked upon the graveyard below him to climb down, he noticed a cloaked figure slip into a large Megalithic structure.

  He whispered again to Yahweh, “Now, that may be one of the fastest answers to prayer yet. What, two seconds? I think that even beats the moment Abram saved Sarai from the assassin of Nimrod.”

  Uriel was referring to a moment when an assassin had captured Sarai after fighting with Abram. Abram was about to throw a dagger at the assassin, knowing he was too weak to make it hit its target. But when he asked El Shaddai to help him in his aim, he did not have to throw because the assassin fell dead from blood loss. It was a double miracle, because Abram would probably have missed and hit Sarai.

  That prayer was answered in about two and a half seconds.

  Of course, Uriel knew there were millions of prayers answered by Yahweh before his beloved children even uttered them, but he liked to see how close he could get to simultaneity.

  He climbed down the rocky crag to get a closer look.

  • • • • •

  That same night, the Rephaim had engaged in sabotage. A platoon of fifteen giants had circled around behind the Israelites and captured a train of supplies on its way to the Israelite camp.

  But they did not steal the supplies. They did not need them. The supplies, they burned. What they wanted to steal were the humans. They kidnaped twenty hostages and brought them back to the army of Edrei.

  By the time the Israelites had discovered the sabotage, the Rephaim had already brought the hostages into their camp and skewered them on roasting poles to cook and eat their flesh.

  Cannibalism was a spiritual rite that the Rephaim believed involved a transforming truth. By eating the flesh of their enemy, they were absorbing their life source into their own bodies, and with it, their power.

  • • • • •

  The next morning, when Joshua had arisen, Caleb alerted him and they went to their observation point to see a line of poles rising above the morning fog. On them were draped the stripped carcasses of their twenty countrymen impaled like limp standards before the armies of Bashan.

  Caleb said with righteous indignation, “So, this is our enemy. This demonic seed.”

  After a moment of silence, Joshua stated, “The pride of these titans will be their undoing. They have just given us an advantage.”

  Caleb could not believe Joshua would be thinking strategy at a time like this. He had become so pragmatic and cold-hearted.

  Then Joshua said, “How quickly can you make those gigantic bows you talked about?”

  “I will need a few days,” said Caleb.

  “You have two,” said Joshua.

  Caleb sighed. Not again.

  Chapter 21

  The morning sun was about to rise. Joshua had gathered his troops for their attack on Og. He walked through the ranks to inspire the men. He spoke from his heart. He spoke with great conviction.

  “Warriors of Israel! We are about to face our first of many encounters with the gibborim of this land: The Rephaim! But fear not, for we are fighting the Wars of Yahweh! Know who you are, Seed of Abraham! And when you arrive on the battlefield and you see their towering forms, and you are tempted to fear, just remember, your ancestors, Enoch, and Methuselah, and Lamech, and Noah vanquished the Nephilim of their day! You are the descendants of giant slayers! These Canaanites are the Seed of the Serpent, and Yahweh has promised you conquest!”

  The men did not cheer, for their strategy was to approach the battlefield with stealth. But they had grown strong in confidence and courage to face their fearful enemy.

  They picked up and marched swiftly to their positions in the woods outside Edrei.

  • • • • •

  Og of Bashan looked down into the forest below. He was dressed for battle with his signature painted white face that embodied death, along with his royal dress of black body armor, black cape, black headdress and gloves. His armor alone was one hundred and forty pounds. It was rare ancient Nephilim armor passed down from antediluvian days. He carried a spear whose shaft was wider than a weaver’s beam and whose head of brass weighed twenty-five pounds. His sword was the size of an average male human soldier and could cut that soldier in half with one swing.

  He and his eight hundred gibborim warriors were the last of the Rephaim, a fearsome people in the days of Abraham, whose reign of terror had only been stopped by a four-army coalition headed by Elamite king Chedorlaomer.

  Og had vowed that would never happen again, so he was particularly set this day upon fighting to the death—to the last giant if necessary.

  But he had higher hopes than that this day. Because he had a few tricks up his chainmail. And he would cut down every last one of these detestable Habiru, man, woman and child, to eradicate their seed from the face of the land.

  His men below were aware of movement in the woods and were already standing ground in the morning fog that seemed to cover everything except the Rephaim that stood above it at nine feet and more. They were like beacons that rose out of the mist with their eagle eyes on any approach.

  But what they had not anticipated was that the giants could be seen above the fog, but could not see anything within it.

  They were therefore easy targets for the special cross bows created by Caleb and brought to the edge of the forest beneath the fog. They were powerful enough to breach the distance and pierce their giant targets with efficiency.

  There were ten giant wooden bows. They were the size of two men, placed on their side and mounted on a wheeled cart low to the ground. A hand crank would pull the string back and notch it. A large arrow bolt would be placed in the groove and the bow aimed at a giant above the fog, before its release. The entire process would take about eight to ten seconds.

  This was the Israelite’s first surprise attack.

  A hail of bolts came at the Rephaim and took out a half dozen of them. Before the soldiers could get their bearings on what was happening, another volley of large arrows took out another eight giants. Some of the bolts had skewered three and four normal soldiers at once, but the bulk of them were aimed high at the Rephaim.

  Then a flurry of normal arrows announced the Israelite archer squad. The Bashan archers returned the attack, but the trees acted as protective shields to the Israelites. Another volley of giant arrows killed more Rephaim before they realized what was happening and began to sink below the fog line.

  The Bashan forces sounded their war horns and charged the forest’s edge.

  But when they got there, the Israelites had vanished, melted back into the forest.

  “COWARDS!” screamed the field commander, Kemoc, a Rephaim warrior with years of battle experience, and a scarred face and a few missing fingers to prove it.

  He turned to his standard-bearer and told him to signal the king up on the city wall that the Israelites were firing and running away.

  They returned to the plateau base and regrouped.

  Before the fog could dissipate, the Israelites launched another giant bow attack, killing a dozen more giants and withdrawing into the forest again, chased by the Bashan forces.

  But the fog was clearing and Og knew the Habiru would not be able to cower in hiding any longer. He had never seen this kind of battle before. Armies would line up and face each other on the battlefield to contest numbers and strength. But this hit and hide tactic was juvenile. This Moses and his general Joshua were clearly frightened of his Rephaim, and that was an advantage he would exploit in the next attack.

  • • • • •

  Around the other side of the city, four archangels prepared for their special mission: To capture and bind the gods of the city. Uriel had brought back intelligence to Mikael, Gabriel, and Raphael that was game changing. He discovered that Ashtart and Molech were holed up in an underground Temple of the Dead
outside the city walls in the vast regional cemetery.

  The archangels would not have to get inside the city. They were relieved. But Uriel felt that their relief might be hasty because he knew the gods were preparing for something big, but just what exactly, he could not be sure. All he knew was that they had gathered the largest assembly of sorcerers, mediums, and necromancers he had ever seen. About one hundred of them. This would not be a mere battle with Watchers, but with their occultic magic as well.

  Inside the Temple of the Dead, Ashtart and Molech led their cadre of hermetic occultists in human sacrifices and a series of chthonic blood rituals. These were not the usual rites of public atonement, but rather specially developed magic rituals of conjuring.

  Twenty human corpses hung upside down with blood draining into the canals of a large circular Babylonian style emblem engraved in bronze on the floor. The blood seemed to follow the canals of the emblem into a subterranean destination.

  Twenty guards stood around the large cavernous tomblike temple, their backs to the sedimentary walls embedded with skeletons of the dead. Torches lit the temple with an eerie flickering orange glow.

  Thirty necromancers chanted incantations from their ancient Babylonian tablets, secured by Ashtart from her Mesopotamian past. It was a cacophony that sounded like the buzzing of an insect hive crossed with the hiss of a pit of snakes.

  In the midst of this dissonant noise, thirty male and female sorcerers engaged in a fertility ritual of sexual copulation with corpses. The bodies of the exhumed dead were in various states of decay, some stinking so bad their necrophiliac lovers vomited in the midst of their diabolical deed.

  Thirty sorcerers mixed alchemical potions for the reanimation of dead tissue, which they then added to the blood seeping down into the dark earth. “Dark earth” was a Hittite expression that meant the underworld.

  Molech presided over the ceremonies, as he was in fact the Lord of the Underworld. He engaged in unspeakable atrocities against a kidnapped child on the sacred altar to build a frenzy of supernatural passion. He then made the child pass through the fire that was located in the center of the room. The smell of burning flesh gave Molech a new arousal.

  As hungry for violence and debauchery as Ashtart was, even she was repulsed by the depths of depravity that excited Molech. He was truly the lowest of the gods when it came to appetite. And he had no sense of fashion either. He was just a maggot that fed on rotting flesh to her.

  But a useful maggot nonetheless.

  And speaking of fashion, Ashtart was decked out in her favorite death cult warrior garb. Hair back and out of the eyes, face painted in deathly white with black lipstick. All black leather, all tight to reveal her succulent curves, but also made with cuts and openings throughout to facilitate flexible movement. Topped off by a wonderfully flowing hooded cape.

  She carried her favorite weapon, her scythe, and thought that someday they should adopt her look as the symbol of death, she was so ravishing. She thought Og had been quite the copycat with his own adornment mimicking her. But she knew imitation was a sincere form of flattery so she let it go.

  She was considering raping Og when this war was over, just to remind him who was queen of fashion in this town.

  • • • • •

  Over in the battlefield of Edrei, the fog had cleared and the armies of Bashan engaged in war chanting and final desecration of the cannibalized Habiru bodies on standards. They ripped them to pieces and scattered them on the battlefield before them, taunting the armies of Israel.

  Joshua signaled his forces, and two platoons of slingers came forward guarded by shield carriers, backed by a division of a thousand men and covered by a volley of their archers behind them. Slingers had to get a bit closer for efficient hits.

  The Rephaim laughed at them. They looked like a party of herdsmen without sword or spear. Shepherds used slings to frighten or sting predators from their herds. But did they really think their puny little rocks were a weapon against warriors? These Habiru were becoming more ridiculous in their eyes with each passing wave of attack. They seemed like children—devious malicious children—but children.

  The slingers were not children, but highly trained units mostly from the tribe of Benjamin that had developed the art of slinging for the art of warfare.

  The sling consisted of one leather strap about six feet long, with a little pouch in the middle. The slinger would grab both ends of the sling and place a round rock in the pouch. He would swing it in a circle about his head or vertically at his side as fast as he could. He would then release one of the straps at the right moment to jettison the rock at its target.

  What the armies of Bashan did not realize was just how lethal slung rocks could be.

  So when they hit, dozens of men were seriously wounded, including giants.

  The Israelites got off two rounds before Og’s war horn bellowed, announcing a charge to his army.

  The Israelites turned and ran back into the forest.

  “Not this time, you scurrying rodents!” yelled Kemoc, the Bashan field commander.

  The Rephaim charged, chasing the Habiru back into the forest. But they were not going to stop at the forest line this time. They were going to hunt them down and slaughter them like the scared little jackrabbits they were.

  Joshua was perched deep in the forest on the highest tree possible, and he could see his plan had worked. He was trying a new form of commanding. Rather than leading his forces into battle, he thought he might have a tactical advantage if he could see the entire battlefield and forces before him and therefore be able to make strategic judgments that he could not possibly make in the heat and heart of the battle. Up here, he could see what was going right and what was going wrong, and signal his forces through trumpet or standard to meet the changing tides of battle. It was the same thing that Og was doing from his perch high atop the walls of Edrei.

  But Joshua did not like being outside the theater of battle. Down in the thick of it, he felt connected to his men and his men to him. He fought with them, bled with them, and they moved like a synchronized body. Up in his perch, he may have a better oversight, but he was removed, distant from his brothers in battle, and thought it would make them feel alone.

  Caleb was down below guarding Joshua’s position with a small unit of men. He was itching to kill himself some giants, and had thought of excuses to slip away into battle and leave his general in the hands of the guard. But he could not trust anyone but himself to make sure of that protection, so he stayed put, wrenching his neck trying to see Joshua up in the tree.

  Down in forest battle, the Bashan forces plunged headlong in pursuit of the Habiru.

  But they were so intent upon catching them that they failed to see the line of Habiru warriors on either side of them that had been waiting in ambush.

  The chased Israelites now turned back and faced their pursuers to fight.

  And the Bashan army was surrounded. The first clash of hand to hand combat began.

  • • • • •

  Ashtart had barely finished pouring the sacrificial blood into her goatskin flasks when the sound of Mikael’s booming voice penetrated the Temple of the Dead and silenced everyone.

  “Azazel and Ramiel, prepare for Tartarus!”

  Four archangels do not need the element of surprise to ambush an orgy of evil. Mikael thought it would be an inspiration for his team, and an added terror for their enemies. And he spoke the original names of the Watchers who were masquerading as Ashtart and Molech.

  The archangels started slicing through the waves of wickedness that stormed toward them.

  It was easy. It was not even a fight. It was an annoyance.

  No, it was a ploy.

  The attacking minions were intended by Ashtart and Molech to delay the angels so they could make good their escape.

  The angels had their hands and swords filled with their attackers, but they saw the gods depart through a tunnel.

  Mikael yelled, “They are get
ting away!”

  The supernatural team increased their speed and finished making minced meat of their enemies.

  Uriel remarked, “You know, I think we might be competition for the Destroyer.” The Destroyer was the Angel of Death who was used by Yahweh to wipe out whole populations of evil.

  “Not the time for levity!” yelped Gabriel.

  Mikael said, “Gabriel and Uriel, take the tunnels. Raphael follow me to the surface!”

  When Mikael and Raphael broke the surface and exited the megalith entrance, they saw Ashtart and Molech standing at a distance. They had escape tunnels to the surface.

  Uriel and Gabriel exited the tunnel to join their comrades.

  They froze with trepidation.

  Ashtart and Molech were walking backwards, spraying the blood from the goatskins all around them like a farmer watering his crops.

  But these were not crops.

  Mikael looked at his feet. They were in a cemetery.

  And suddenly the ground that the gods had watered with their alchemical blood began to erupt.

  The angels watched in wonder as deceased and buried bodies came alive and broke their way out of their graves.

  The distance between the angels and the gods was blocked by an increasing number of these rising corpses, these living dead.

  They were all in various states of decay, due to the amount of time they had been dead and buried. Some were whole persons with rotting flesh and glazed eyeballs, others were nearly all skeleton, but all of them were now facing the angels and were ravenous for human or angel flesh.

  They attacked.

  Uriel and Raphael were the closest. They sliced off arms and legs, but the creatures kept coming at them, chomping their jaws.

  And they were inhumanly strong.