Strangers in the Land

by Stant Litore

  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.

  “Why would someone burn an empty house?” he murmured.

  “It wasn’t empty,” Devora said quietly.

  Barak’s pulse quickened. He took another look, a careful one. There. His throat tightened. Crushed beneath the fallen timbers, a body charred and blackened, only its legs visible. One shred of cloth wound about the left leg had somehow escaped the fire as if by an act of God, who loathes above all deeds a murder committed in silence without eyes to witness. The betraying cloth was white, though smudged now with ash and soot.

  Devora stepped with an old woman’s care through the ruins. Barak watched her without dismounting. The white cloth gave him an uneasy feeling in his belly, like nausea, but weaker than that; he felt that he knew what kind of cloth the man had worn and what it must signify, but he would not look at it in his mind. It was like the dead in his vineyard—he knew the horror was there, he could hear it rustling among the vines, but he could not see it without stepping closer to peer between the green leaves—and that he would not do. If some man had been murdered here in his own house, his shelter burned down about his head by his neighbors’ malice or fear, let God whisper the secret, if he would, into the ears of his navi; Barak would not go digging among the cinders to find it. He had trouble enough.

  In the saddle, the Canaanite began humming softly to herself. The sound of it was very lovely, and the tune was simple and familiar, though it was a moment before he knew what it was. Barak felt his eyes burn and scrubbed the back of his hand across them quickly, and only then realized it was the same go-to-sleep song Hadassah had used to sing while holding her belly, when she was with child.

  “Be still, woman.” His voice was hoarse.

  The song stopped. Hurriya looked at him.

  “We’re all going to die here,” the young woman whispered.

  Barak jerked. “I said be still,” he snapped.

  “Something’s wrong here. All wrong. Some of the people didn’t leave. And the ones that did left parts of themselves behind. And now we won’t be able to leave.”

  Barak lifted a hand to slap her, to bring her out of whatever fit she was in or merely to silence her. But at that moment Devora turned back toward them. Barak lowered his hand.

  “Something very wrong did happen here,” Devora murmured when she reached them, and her face was cold.

  Hoofbeats interrupted her, and Barak snapped his head about to gaze down the street, the way they’d come. Several horses turned the corner—eight, maybe nine horses. All that the camp had left, since Nimri had not returned. He recognized Omri at the front and Laban right behind him, a man nearly as large as Zadok, with his great axe strapped across his back. Both of these chieftains bore torches, the firelight revealing their faces in the dark. As they rode nearer, it was clear the others were men of Laban’s, hardy men of Issachar. Barak breathed a sigh of relief. He could bear the silence of this town better if he had men at his back.

  “Chieftain!” Omri called as the men pulled up beside the ruin. “More men are coming. On foot.”

  Laban gave the ruin a dark look. “What is this?”

  “They burned the house,” Devora said, nearly trembling with fury. “These half-heathen. They burned this house and him in it. He needs a cairn.” Her voice rose, something near panic. “They needed to give him a cairn.”

  “Why kill him at all?” Barak asked. “He was a levite. I saw the robe.”

  “He was already dead,” Devora said. “They locked him in his own house. His body likely stopped breathing long before the fire was lit. His neighbors boarded up his house, shutting him in. They could hear him thumping against the walls inside. They could hear him moaning.” Her eyes had a distant look, and Barak wondered suddenly if she was seeing what she described, not as a woman imagining it or deducing it, but as a navi witnessing it, witnessing events that were already past as clearly as he himself might witness some event in the present. He felt a chill.

  Then the look passed from her eyes and she drew in a slow breath. “It took them a long time to gather up the courage,” she murmured. “They stood there praying and weeping in the street. And finally they burned the house.”

  “God,” Barak whispered. “Holy God.”

  “They spat in the face of Holy God when they set fire to a body made in his likeness,” Devora said coldly, turning from the ashes and striding back to her horse. “Only God has any right to burn lives from the earth. Bodies belong beneath clean stone, with raised cairns so they can be remembered. Who will remember this man?”

  Hurriya, still in the saddle and shivering a little from her fever, was gazing on the ruin with a
fascinated, focused look.

  “Men are different in the towns,” Laban said, his voice deeper even than Zadok’s. “We believe we are twelve tribes, navi, but we are really two. Men of the tents, men of the cedar houses. Issachar still lives in tents. Here, in the hills of Naphtali tribe, men have raised houses or live in houses the Canaanites raised. Men of the tents hold to the Law. We know how fragile our tents are. Men of the houses—” He shrugged. “The houses are large. They like to have many people in them to share bread. They learn strange ways, are quicker to do strange things.”

  “This is no Canaanite custom,” Hurriya called faintly, “to burn our dead. We take our dead to the water.”

  Even as Devora climbed into the saddle behind the girl, Barak glanced down the empty street, pondering what commands to give Laban and Omri.

  They were here. They might as well do this right.

  “My men and I will look around.” He looked to the nazarite. “The women stay here.”

  “Zadok,” the navi said, her voice cold and authoritative. Without another word, Devora got her horse moving and walked him down the street, with the Canaanite breathing shallowly, her head resting on the navi’s clothed shoulder. The nazarite gave Barak a warning look and followed.

  Barak cursed. “Laban, search the west end of the settlement. See if you can find any of the people who lived here. Take the men. Omri, with me.”

  He turned Ager and rode after the navi, overtaking her. He heard the clatter of hooves from Omri’s steed close behind him and, more distantly, the hoofbeats and the voices of the men moving off in the other direction. Seeing that woman riding ahead with that wild blade unsheathed, fury and confusion burned in his breast.

  Barak moved his horse alongside Shomar and pressed the gelding’s side aggressively, his leg brushing Devora’s a moment. “Do you think you can ride where you will,” he whispered fiercely, “like a man?”

  “I think I can ride where God sends me,” she said.

  Omri drew up alongside Barak on the left, holding his torch away from his horse, and he gave Barak a look that made it clear the young chieftain would enjoy beating this woman and teaching her her place. Barak held up his hand to forestall any fool’s speech from the younger man. He pitched his voice low. “Navi, you are not in Shiloh. You are in my camp, among my men. You will go where I tell you and stay where I put you.”

  The navi’s eyes flashed. “This is Walls, this is not your camp,” she said.

  “If you leave the navi’s side, you will die tonight.” The Canaanite kept her eyes lowered in the way of a northern woman, with respect, but there was a bite to her tone.

  Barak’s eyes widened.

  “What have you seen, Hurriya?” Devora asked quietly.

  “The dead.” The Canaanite gazed ahead with that same, glazed look. “They filled the street.”

  “And you saw Barak fighting them,” Devora murmured. “So it was not a vision of what has already happened. Hurriya has visions, as I do, Barak. She sees what God sees. You can trust what she says.”

  Two women who were kadosh. Two of them. But Barak didn’t have time to dwell on it, for the girl’s words seeped in past his anger and unease. His palms began to sweat. “There are dead in the houses or somewhere near,” he said.

  “I saw them in the street,” the heathen girl said faintly.

  They walked their horses slowly, watching and listening. They had kept their voices low. Their horses’ hooves seemed too loud against the hard dirt. The street grew a little wider around them, and instead of houses there were now low shops, structures with three walls and thatched roofs, open to the street. Walls had been the largest settlement in the north, and there were many shops on this narrow market street that ran the length of the town. In most of them, the wares still hung, exposed to any thieving hands, as though their owners had fled without tarrying to pack away their livelihoods. Barak saw pottery, lovely in its beauty but with a thin sheen of dust settling over it. He saw dyed cloth brought in by camel and caravan from the coast, he saw beads and jewelry from the Horse People east of the Tumbling Water. One shop sold small gods and goddesses. Devora hissed through her teeth as they passed that one.

  At last the navi stopped beside an open shop where dozens of small leather pouches hung on cords from the roof, and bound sheaves of leaves and herbs hung beside them. She rode Shomar right into the shop without dismounting and talked with Hurriya in a voice too quiet for Barak to hear her words. The navi brushed her fingers across the leaves, sometimes bringing her hand to her nose to catch the leaves’ scent. She opened some of the pouches.

  It seemed to take a long time, and Barak’s palms kept sweating. He peered down the street at the dead market and the empty shops. Omri fidgeted beside him, drumming his own saddle with his fingertips. “Why do women take so long at everything?” the younger man muttered. “Take half a day to a market, come late to a meal, come late to bed. When I own a girl, I’ll—”

  “Shh.” Barak held up his hand again. Omri subsided with one last mutter, then kicked his horse and rode ahead a little. Barak waited by the shop. He wondered suddenly if he should muffle the horses’ hooves by winding cloth about them. He felt wary of making any unnecessary sound. Even the crackling of Omri’s torch sounded too loud to him. He glanced at the grim nazarite and saw in Zadok’s eyes that he too was anxious, though he sat very still in his saddle. Barak lifted his head and took the air’s scent, but could detect no decay in it. He looked about at the emptiness of Walls with wide eyes, his heart beating fast. The girl’s words kept echoing in his mind. The dead were here. Or somewhere close.

  After a moment he thought he heard humming, and caught his breath again. The Canaanite; she hummed only a few notes, then stopped. The loss of it wrenched at him; for a moment she’d sounded very like Hadassah.

  “What is that song?” he whispered as loudly as he dared. He’d never asked Hadassah what the words meant, but hearing the melody now, with Hadassah dead beneath her cairn and forever lost to him, the strangeness of the tune and the heathen words of it haunted him.

  When Hurriya spoke after a moment, her voice was cold and distant. Devora kept looking through the herbalist’s wares, appearing to ignore the girl.

  “He grows tall as a cedar tree,” the girl whispered, and Barak had to strain to hear her. “He will have fine things to delight him. Olive oil and perfumes for his body. And a woman who is scented and lovely for him. And when his mother has died, he will hear her voice whenever he walks by the water where her body is. I—I sang it to my little one, walking out of the hills. Until he died. Afterward, when I tried, he—it—the moaning—”

  She fell silent.

  Barak gazed at the girl in horror.

  Devora held a few leaves in her hand, and now she plucked a few more from their sheaf by the roof above her head. Barak recognized the first as mint but had no idea what the other leaves were. The navi handed them to the girl and said softly, “Chew these, girl. We’ll brew some into tea later. Chew, it’ll help.”

  The girl took one leaf and nibbled on it, her breathing shallow.

  Devora backed her horse out of the little shop. “That song. Why do you Canaanites promise soft lives to your children?” she asked, her voice quiet and bitter. “You make it too easy to forget the desert. You give them lies to hope in. Life is—brutal. It might be given to us or taken from us. Painting your eyes with kohl or wearing dyed cloth from the sea does not change this.” Her face darkened as she gazed about at the abandoned shops. “You heathen will never be as vigilant as we are. You have not suffered as we have.”

  For a moment, only the sound of hooves on the hard, packed dirt.

  “I have suffered,” Hurriya said, biting off a little of the leaf.

  Devora flushed and said nothing.

  “And you are wrong. Maybe my mothers and fathers never had to fear being eaten in the desert. But, knowing the danger, we might be as careful as you! And we know things, useful things. Walls—our fathers bu
ilt walls, but yours tore them down. Walls could have saved my—” She choked and fell silent.

  “Walls couldn’t have saved this town,” Devora said. “Whatever happened here happened inside the houses.”

  Down the street, Omri began to thump the butt of his spear against the packed earth, and Barak bristled. Did he have to make such noise?

  “Look,” Zadok said sharply.

  Barak and the navi both followed his gaze and saw, far down the street, beyond the shops, where another street lined with houses crossed this one, there stood a mighty house, much larger than any other they’d seen, an elder’s house. This house also had gone up like a torch. The walls still stood, but they were charred and blackened from fire and there were great holes in their sides. The roof appeared to be entirely gone. More than anything, the house reminded Barak of the way blackened cedars sometimes stand on the hills for years, their insides hollowed out by lightning and the wrath of God.

  His throat tightened. This town, like his own small homestead, had been prosperous. It sat by a lake filled with fish, a day’s walk from plentiful fields, a land of rich vineyards and soft rains. The land they’d been promised, milk and honey. Grape bunches large as a man’s chest. Hadassah, her body warm in the soft night. Where were those promises now? Burned out, blighted, ash and cinders.

  Cold sweat. His tunic stuck to his back.

  They cantered slowly past the shops toward the house, and Omri joined them, lifting his spear. He looked a little pale. As they rode closer, Barak thought he saw movement in the shadows before the door of the house. With a shock, he realized there was a figure on its knees, bent over another figure that lay still on the earth. Barak gasped. That figure supine on the ground was a corpse, an unburied and defiled corpse. All the flesh and muscle had been stripped from the legs, which were only bones. Only the torso still resembled a living person. The body was small—a child or a dwarf; its face had been torn and gnawed, making it impossible to tell. The belly had been gouged open, and the thing leaning over it had its fists full of entrails, lifted slickly from the torn belly to its hungering mouth. As Barak halted his horse, the thing glanced over its shoulder at him, its mouth and chin dark with blood, its eyes—terrible eyes—dull and sightless in the starlight. It snarled, teeth bared, like an animal warning scavengers back from its prey.