by Stant Litore
“It seems he knows you,” Devora said. “This is a very great burden, and a great gift. No veil between you and God. I have to think about this.”
Devora got up quickly, paced out to the shadows beyond the firelight. She set her back to the nearest tree and just breathed evenly.
That Hurriya should be chosen, that was a sign.
But a sign of what?
That, revoking his promise, God had chosen another People? Or that the survival of the Covenant and the People depended on strangers? Or something else?
She glanced around the bole of the tree, saw Hurriya at the fire in her salmah. Thought again how inadequate a garment that was. A new and strange thought occurred to the navi—what if God had left the People unsheltered because they themselves had given no shelter?
Shelter the stranger in your land...
If Hurriya was the next navi, it was because God had something for her to say to the People, something only Hurriya could see, something only she could tell them. Something they must hear. Something about the strangers in their land.
The sickly sweet scent of death assailed her, making her belly heave. With a gasp, Devora turned her gaze away from the fire and gave a start, her heart pounding. A tall figure stood there in the dark, massive and looming over her. Its eyes glinting in the light of the fire.
It was not Zadok.
THE CORPSE
FOR SEVERAL heartbeats Devora stood paralyzed, caught by the thing’s eyes, which were empty and cold and only gave back firelight the way metal gives back a dull sheen. The corpse’s sides moved in and out as it took quick breaths. Then it snarled, a sound that had nothing human in it, and lunged into her, knocking the breath from her, pinning her to the tree with its weight. Devora lifted her arm to shield her face and throat, felt the thing’s neck pressed against the heavy wool of her sleeve. Its breath on her cheek, cold as the air over a frozen lake. The corpse leaned hard on her arm, its teeth snapping a mere breath from her throat; it had lurched right out of her night dreams and into her waking life, it had come for her, she’d always known it would. She found her breath and screamed shrilly. Turned her face to the side, fighting to hold it off with her arm, but the thing was strong. Another moment and it would be feeding on her—
A flash in the dark, and the corpse’s head was severed half from its neck and fell limp against its left shoulder. The thing’s hissing went silent, but still its cold hands grasped at her. Wide-eyed, Devora saw Hurriya standing behind the corpse, naked, Mishpat lifted in her hands.
With a cry, Devora dropped to her knees and threw herself to the side in the dark, heard the corpse scrambling after her as she rolled. A cry from Hurriya, and as Devora rolled onto her back she caught a glimpse of the sword flashing again through the air, and then she was on her belly again and then had her hands and knees beneath her and was pushing herself up to her feet.
The corpse was impaled on Mishpat, the blade driven into its chest; its head hung limply behind its shoulder, and its hands were groping in the air. Hurriya was ducking them.
“The head,” Devora gasped. “The head!”
Hurriya wrenched the sword free of the corpse’s belly and began swinging it like a wood-axe, chopping the blade into their assailant’s head, shoulders, and arms. Again and again. The body went down and she stood over it, lifting Mishpat high and sending the blade shrieking down through the air. Sobbing as she chopped into the body.
For a moment Devora looked on with horror. Then staggered toward her, panting. “It’s done,” she rasped. “It’s done, girl!”
Hurriya didn’t seem to hear her; she just kept lifting the blade and chopping. Her face wild with anguish. Bits of necrotic flesh flew through the air. Some of it spattered across her legs.
“God’s Covenant, girl! Stop!” Devora cried, her eyes wide.
A sound of crashing through the trees to her left, and she spun to face it. Hurriya did as well, lifting Mishpat, but then there was a man’s cry from that direction: “Devora!”
For an instant Devora was startled—Zadok had never used her name before, nor had she permitted it—but relief overwhelmed the brief shock. “Zadok!” she cried.
The nazarite burst into sight, his spear in his hand and three waterskins looped over his shoulder. Taking in the scene at a glance, he cast spear and skins aside and swept Devora up in his powerful arms, startling her. In a moment he’d borne her to the fire and set her beside it. His eyes were hot with fury, but he said nothing. He ducked into the shadows of the trees, and in a moment he returned with spear and waterskins and Hurriya walking beside him, naked and shaking, her legs bespattered with bits of flesh and tissue. She carried Mishpat out to her side.
Devora got hurriedly to her feet. “Zadok, my waterskin—”
He tossed it to her. “Why did you leave the fire?”
“Why did you?” Devora cried.
Zadok looked at her a moment. “Stay here,” he said firmly.
She nodded jerkily. His bronze spear clutched in one hand, the nazarite rose and hurried back into the shadows beneath the trees. Devora looked into the dark for a moment, shivering. Were there more out there, more dead?
But she had a problem here, near at hand, something she had to tend to. Something she could tend to.
“Sit,” Devora said to Hurriya. “Quickly.”
Hurriya lowered herself unsteadily, the firelight showing goose bumps along her arms and on the skin of her breasts, from the cold. She held Mishpat out to the navi, and Devora saw now that the girl had wrapped a small cloth about the hilt, so that her skin did not touch it. Devora would have been relieved, but she was too shaken with fear. Hurriya set the blade before Devora and removed the cloth. She did so slowly, as though reluctant to let the blade go.
Devora set the blade aside—it would have to be cleansed—and then poured out the entire waterskin over the girl’s thighs and legs. Swept up some dry brush and began scrubbing her legs.
Hurriya gasped at the pain of it.
“Be still,” Devora snapped. “You have bits of—of it—on you. Be still, girl.”
Devora bent low over the girl and looked at her legs carefully in the firelight. Hissed through her teeth and brushed at a spot just above her knee. She glanced at the hair between the girl’s thighs, then gave a closer look though her face burned. But nothing had spattered that high on her body.
When Devora was satisfied that none of the unclean flesh was left on the girl’s body, she began brushing fiercely at the ground, pushing dirt and offal into a small pile that one might cover with two hands, if one dared to touch it. Devora straightened and turned toward Hurriya, still breathing fast.
“Never do that again,” she snapped.
“It stopped moving,” Hurriya breathed. “It stopped.”
“Yes, it did.”
“And it didn’t bite you. Or me.”
“It didn’t.” Devora’s voice was sharp. She wanted no comfort or help from this heathen girl; now that she was sure the girl had no bits of the corpse still clinging to her, Devora wanted to be left alone, to hold herself in her own arms and shiver. She realized she was still on the edge of panic. A whimper of fear rose in her throat, and she held it back. She bit her lip, hard, tasted her own living blood. Began to breathe more calmly. The girl was right. The corpse hadn’t bitten the navi, hadn’t even touched her bare skin. She was all right.
“You don’t know what I saw.” The Canaanite stared into the fire. “Coming down from the hills. With my child. The things I saw. I couldn’t watch another woman be eaten.”
Devora knelt by her and sat back on her heels. She watched the firelight play across the younger woman’s face. Then glanced over her shoulder at the dark under the trees. With a shudder, she wondered if she would ever again be able to sleep near trees.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and glanced back at the girl. But Hurriya had lost consciousness.
Devora watched her a moment, saw again the leanness of Hurriya’s body as she lay
naked by the fire. Her breasts rising and falling with her breath. That ghastly pallor to her skin, almost as though she might be one of the dead herself. And now, great bruises forming on her thighs and the beginnings of sores where the saddle had rubbed her raw even through her salmah.
A terrible unease was growing in Devora, as though some beast had given birth in her heart, and its clawed pup was growing, scratching at the walls within her, feeding on all that Devora now saw. Many times Devora had suffered her nightmares and night terrors, seeing again her mother’s face and the lurching dead in the camp. Often she had cursed the heathen in her heart, those who would cast the dead into open water, uncovered and unrestrained and utterly without burial, if the Hebrews who possessed the land permitted it. Devora hadn’t forgotten the Canaanite cheekbones and eyes of the dead who’d fallen upon Shiloh camp thirty years before. When Canaanites were brought before her seat beneath the olive—which was rare, for cases involving them were easily dealt with, without the navi’s intervention—but when they were brought to her, Devora had dealt her judgment harshly, knowing that only the strictest observance of the Law could keep the People safe. One Law for the Hebrew and for the stranger in the land, and a stoning and then burial beneath the stones if the violation of Law was so severe that no lesser cleansing would suffice.
Often, she had remembered the Canaanite features of the dead.
But never had she imagined having her life preserved by one of the heathen.
Hurriya shivered in her restless sleep. Devora crouched beside her, held her hand an inch above the girl’s brow. Warmth.
The beginning of a fever, perhaps. For a moment the panic rose again in Devora. What if it was the fever of the dead? But no, the girl did not have that look. This was a fever of the living body, some uncleanness that came of having a child and losing it and suffering after. At least so Devora hoped.
She rose shakily and walked about the fire. Took up Hurriya’s salmah and brought it back to where she was lying. Draped it over her. Hurriya didn’t move beneath it.
Devora set to the task of cleaning her sword, with as much care as she had cleaned Hurriya’s body. She shuddered as she wiped the flesh and stains from the blade with a handful of grass. She did so meticulously, slowly, careful not to get any of it on herself. “I was right to bring you,” she whispered to the blade. Her eyes round in the dark.
Glancing up, she caught a glimpse of movement beneath the trees and gasped. Her heart wild in her breast. She gripped Mishpat’s hilt and was about to cry out, but then Zadok’s enormous shape emerged from the darkness, and he stepped out into the firelight. He had on his goatskin gloves and was dragging the corpse behind him by its ankle, carrying his spear in his other hand. He gave Devora a grim look and cast the body down at the edge of the firelight. “I think it is the only one,” he said.
“You think?” Devora whispered.
He set his spear aside. “I may be wrong. You and the girl must stay by the fire, navi.”
Devora nodded. She was full of questions, but she glanced down at the corpse, and for the moment her questions choked in her throat.
Now that it wasn’t moving, the corpse seemed indeed a pitiful thing. Its left shoulder and the left side of its face had been terribly hacked open by the sword. The rest of it—a husk and only a husk. As though God had sucked out the breath of life that he’d blown into the human body at the beginning of time and left behind something fragile as papyrus but upon which no letters Hebrew or other could ever be written again. In this leathery flesh that remained, no hopes or fears could be inscribed, and even if a man were to pull the unclean bones free from this withered corpse and chisel words into them as if into stone, even those bones would merely crumble away. Gazing at that corpse, Devora felt a horror of the brevity of life and the transience of all lives human and animal, which in the end are eaten or devoured whether by their dead or by some rogue lion or only by wind and soil. Whether God will remember them or not.
“Where were you?” she breathed.
“By the water,” Zadok said. “There’s a stream downhill, beyond the trees, barely close enough to hear a shout. I heard something in the trees while you slept, and I went that far looking for it.” He paused, his regret showing in his eyes. “That was a mistake.”
“It was a mistake,” Devora said hoarsely.
Zadok was silent a moment. “I am used to doing this alone,” he said. “When the levites send me out. When there is some corpse in a man’s barley or feasting on his flock. Forgive me, navi.”
“We are not hunting, Zadok.” Devora couldn’t keep the edge from her voice, and no longer wished to. So the man was grieving. So he felt he’d failed Eleazar. He still had responsibilities to her. “Not until we find Barak and his men. We need to find Barak. And you need to stay here and defend us until we do.”
Zadok gazed into the fire, the lines of his face tense. “There were three sets of footprints by the stream.”
Devora was silent a moment. Zadok’s words doused her anger like ice water. “The dead?”
“They did not walk like living men.” His gaze flicked down to the corpse. “We must hope the other two have walked on.”
“Surely my scream would have brought them if they hadn’t,” Devora said uneasily.
Zadok shook his head. Then he crouched by the corpse. His gloved hands turned its head to one side, then the other. Devora gasped. The body was missing both of its ears. Indeed, now that it lay in the firelight she could see that the right side of its head had been torn open from where the ear should be to the middle of its hair, baring tissue and torn muscle and a white glint of bone.
“Ears are easy to tear away,” Zadok muttered. “If one of these is feeding, it is likely to go for the throat or the cheek or the ears. Soft places where the teeth can dig in and tear. This one may have been in the trees all evening, navi. Yet it did not moan or approach our camp. It did not hear us.” He gave her a grim look.
“So the others could still be in there.” Devora peered into the dark beneath the trees.
Zadok didn’t answer. His hands were shaking slightly.
“Don’t freeze on me,” Devora breathed.
“Your will, navi.” The nazarite’s voice was hoarse. Without lifting his gaze from the corpse, he pulled out his bronze knife and set the blade against his left palm. Drew it swiftly across his skin. For a moment he closed his hand around the blade. Devora looked on, disconcerted, as blood leaked between his fingers.
She rose to get a cloth, but Zadok shook his head. “Let it bleed a while,” he muttered.
She watched him a moment. “This will keep you alert?”
He lifted his eyes to hers. Dark with pain.
She nodded, glanced at the corpse, then at the fire and the girl lying beneath her salmah near it. Trying to gather her thoughts. After a moment she realized Hurriya was awake and watching them. Her face still terribly pale, her eyes cold.
“Is the girl well?” Zadok asked hoarsely. He was gripping his sliced hand tightly with the other.
“Yes,” Devora said.
“She must not panic. It’s best if we stay quiet tonight.”
Devora nodded.
“She took up your blade.” Zadok’s eyes shone in the firelight. “Brave girl. For a Canaanite.”
Hurriya could probably hear their words, though they kept their voices low; she was only a spear’s length away. But she did not appear to react to them. She was staring at the corpse.
“She hates them,” Devora whispered. “She doesn’t fear them anymore, not as I do. She just hates them.”
“Hers are a strange people.”
“Yes they are.” Devora glanced back at the trees, peering into the hoshekh beneath the branches. Nothing there. Nothing that could be seen. She glanced down at the corpse’s ravaged face. It was male, but she could tell little more about it. Neither what color its eyes had been nor its age. “I can’t tell if he was Hebrew or heathen,” Devora muttered. The uncertainty of it w
eighed on her. It seemed now vitally important to her to know who had unraveled the roots of the Covenant: the heathen in the north or the uncareful Hebrews. She gave the corpse’s face another hard look, then her gaze strayed down its body, settled on its hips. She drew in a quick breath as a solution to her uncertainty occurred to her.
Devora averted her eyes quickly, her face warming. Found herself facing Hurriya, whose eyes seemed to read hers. The Canaanite woman got unsteadily to her knees, one hand clutching the salmah tightly about her. Hollows about her eyes—the day and the night were exacting a fierce toll on her body.
Hurriya crawled near, then bent over the corpse, swiftly tugging its clothing aside. Devora couldn’t look. She fought a surge of nausea at what Hurriya was doing, at her closeness to the dead. But the girl was already unclean; it would make no difference.
“He was Hebrew,” Hurriya rasped.
Devora said nothing. Zadok watched the Canaanite with that quiet wariness of his.
“You Hebrews mark your bodies,” Hurriya said coldly. “A Canaanite woman always knows what kind of man has assaulted her.”
Without another word, Hurriya rose and returned to her place across the fire, keeping her salmah wrapped tight about her.
Devora looked after her a moment, thoughts leaping through her, quick as a flight of deer through a wood. She exchanged a look with Zadok, then went to Hurriya. The girl lay shivering. Devora knelt by her, trying to think through what the girl had said. There had been signs enough for her to interpret, but she had to step carefully. She watched the girl’s face.
“The child’s father. Malachi ben Aharon. You were his slave?”
Hurriya didn’t answer.
“He bought you and was cruel to you?”
The Canaanite just stared at the fire.
Devora waited for a while. She heard Zadok digging, for there was a body to bury. The navi was just about to give up and try sleeping again when the girl spoke.
“My father couldn’t feed the three of us—my mother, my sister, and me. So he sold me to one of the other workers in the olive grove. A Hebrew, who could afford me. He sold me because I was old enough to be—desirable. When that man—” Her voice broke, but she recovered quickly, and Devora felt chilled at the anguish she heard. “When he touched me, I thought I’d die. The way he hurt me—he liked to hurt me.”