by Stant Litore
She guided Shomar back toward the fire and the distant settlement and, farther along the shore, the tents of the northern men. In the firelight, she glanced at Hurriya’s face and gave a start.
Hurriya’s cheeks glistened with silent tears.
Devora felt a pang of remorse. The girl was exhausted. Shomar, huffing softly in the dark, was exhausted too. This was no time to be riding along the shore in the dark, fleeing her night terrors. She put her arm about the girl’s waist and pulled her back against her breast, holding her tightly. “Shh,” the navi whispered.
“Further north,” Hurriya whispered back. “I have to get further north. I have to find Anath. I have to find her.”
NO SURVIVORS
THE RISING sun found Barak walking with the other war-leaders through a strange land of falling ash and ash underfoot and ash in the air they breathed. Omri and Laban spoke in low tones about what to do next, where to lead the men, where to seek the dead, but Barak walked in grim silence. He could not stop thinking about the hours of flame and heat and sweat. His men had worked right there amid the flames, shoving the flaming dead back into the houses, fighting to contain them as they burned and withered.
Those faces, melting in the flames. Hissing and snapping their jaws even as they burned.
“How many men died last night?” he whispered.
The others fell silent.
“Five of mine,” Omri muttered after a moment. “And eight others.”
“Mordecai ben Enoch was dragged into the fire.” Laban turned and looked back up the street. “He was a strong man, and he killed twelve of the Sea Coast raiders when they came through the Galilee. Four wives will be watching at the window of his house, but he won’t come home to them.”
Thirteen. Thirteen men.
“And how many unclean?” he said.
“Eight men bitten and lived,” Omri said.
“Show me,” Barak said.
Omri and Laban exchanged a look.
“I know,” Barak growled. “Show me.”
The eight knelt in a line in the street where the children had died, with two armed men standing guard behind them. As Barak approached with the other chieftains, he saw the navi moving along the line with slow but unfaltering steps, with that wild blade unsheathed and held out to the side. The nazarite, for once, was not at her side. Devora’s face was grimmer than Barak had ever seen a woman’s face before, and she stood straighter and fiercer than any woman he’d known, her posture one of uncompromising duty; she might almost have been a man.
“Is it right that a woman should do this?” Omri muttered.
Barak held up his hand, and the Zebulunite fell silent, though his body was rigid with tension.
Some of the eight knelt in the ash between the tall houses of their own free will. Three were feverish and trembled where they knelt, one of them barely conscious. Four had been bound, their wrists lashed together and then secured with short cords to their tied ankles. One had struggled until he’d toppled to his side, and one of the men assigned to guard them had moved to him quickly and, gripping his arm with a gloved hand, pulled him back to his knees. “You shame your kin,” the guard hissed in his ear before stepping back.
As the navi stopped before each of the kneeling men, she asked the man’s name, repeated it after him, and then met his eyes with hers. “You fought to defend the People,” she said. “The Words of Going will be sung for you.”
A few of them thanked her. One did not look at her, and she placed the tip of her blade beneath his chin, gently lifting his face until he did. Barak saw that she was careful not to touch any of the men, though she stood near them. She did not shrink away or scream. She did not do anything he might expect a woman to. Her face remained hard as stone.
With each man, once she had heard his name, the navi lifted Mishpat and the blade swept down through the air with a sound like a bird’s wing. When the ash at her feet was soaked dark, she stepped away and stood before the next of the men.
One of the Hebrews down the line wept, but none of them screamed as the sword fell. Not one. There had been screaming enough during the night. Perhaps they had screamed so much that they had lost the ability to, like singing until you’re hoarse. Or perhaps the horror of what could await them was greater than the horror of the swift, delicate blade.
Looking on, Barak shivered and felt again the touch of the dead on his leg. In the hour before dawn, Barak’s pavilion had been moved near the edge of the town, and he had gone to it once he could hear no more moans of the dead. He’d cast aside his spear and fallen to his knees inside his tent the moment the flap fell back, plunging him into a warm, comfortable darkness that was utterly different from the cold night within the town. The floor of his tent was spread with rugs of Canaanite design, many of them woven even here in Walls, others to the north in Judges’ Well; he felt the weave of them against his knees. He’d fallen to his face, pressing his brow to the rugs, moaning, praying, begging, though he didn’t know for what. He could not rid himself of the sight—in his mind—of that little girl impaled on his spear.
With a groan he’d rolled to his side and lifted his knee to his chest, his hands feeling quickly along the skin of his leg. There was no bite there, no scratch or wound. But his skin felt to him like ice. Like dead skin. He breathed raggedly through his teeth, exploring his calf with his fingers. He kept moving his fingers up and down along his skin, gasping for air. He was alive. He was alive, but they had touched him. Those things—those corpses—unclean corpses—they’d touched him. He squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden rush of tears. “Make me clean,” he moaned, “make me clean.”
He wanted then the wine of his vineyard, not to drink but to wash his leg, even as he might wash out a wound. He had clutched at his leg, breathing hard, trying to grapple with what had happened this night. The silent town. The children. The dead girl’s touch. He felt almost as though he were in the grip of a fever; he shook and twisted on the rugs. Called out once for his wife. Hadassah, whom God had taken. As God had now taken an entire town. An entire town of the People.
Now, as Barak ben Abinoam stood watching the holy woman take the lives of eight of his men, his leg remained ice cold and the ashes on the ground warm against his sandalled feet. He lifted his eyes and gazed bleakly at the burned-out husks of what had once been great houses of cedar. He had known this town; he’d met Hadassah here. Now everything here was unfamiliar to him. He did not know how to act, what to decide, what traditions either of his People’s or his wife’s might apply. He had burned her mother’s gods that the God of his own fathers might keep his crop and his land safe and unstrange to him. But everywhere he turned, he saw all that should have been safe now contorted and burned.
At last the navi finished her dread work. As Barak watched her she glanced up, and for a moment their eyes met. Hers were cold as the lake. Barak looked away. When he lifted his gaze again, the navi was already a long way up the street, leaving the dead. The two men who’d guarded the bitten now stood by their bodies, which lay like bundles of clothes on the ash-covered ground. Looking more like some child’s joke than the bodies of dead men.
Omri and Laban stood silent beside him. He could sense their horror. There were no words for this, there had never been and never would be. The bodies lay very still. A little way beyond them, Barak could see the crumpled corpses of last night’s children, all of them covered with a fine layer of white ash so that they no longer looked like the bodies of the dead but like the monuments of Kemet where their fathers’ fathers had toiled to make brick. But the statues in Kemet were said to be forms of beauty, while these statues of ash were the forms of children that appeared as though they’d died in terrible torture. Chewed and bitten, some with their bellies eaten. Their scalps cloven by an iron blade. Their faces distorted, frozen for all time in expressions of abominable and unanswerable hunger. Suddenly and for the first time, Barak was grateful that his seed had borne no lasting fruit in his wife Hadassah’s b
ody. Had it done so, he might have had to see his own flesh become one of—one of these. He was a man of the north; he had survived blight and bad harvests and raids from the coast. He had survived many things. He did not know if he could survive that.
“How did this happen?” Omri whispered. He had his face averted, as though he could not look directly on the bodies.
“The navi may know,” Laban rumbled.
Barak shook his head. He did not need a navi’s vision or any words whispered out of the dark by God to guess. “The men of Walls concealed them in the cache,” he said quietly, “then most of them left. They must have hoped to draw away the dead, lead them away from their children.”
“But we found the dead here,” Omri said.
“Only some—those that died in their houses, perhaps even after the others left, the living who had no fever and could still walk. They locked all the houses, and they closed up this cache. All we’ve found are the men and women they left behind. The unclean ones.”
Omri looked pale.
“We only found one of the dead that wasn’t in a house. That one must have burst out somehow—something drew its attention before we even came here. It was—feeding.” Barak swallowed uneasily. “Maybe someone came to the town before we did. One of the men coming home perhaps. Or someone from another village visiting kin.”
“Elohi,” Laban breathed.
Barak lifted his eyes toward the stark, surrounding hills. The groaning dead who were in the streets of Walls must have groped their way over the stones and up the slopes after the settlement’s men and women, pursuing them with a hunger that would never rest, never halt. It had been a good plan, whoever among the men and women of this town had devised it, when they realized there were too many dead to burn. But for the children, it had been too late. Maybe one of the children, or several, had been bitten, had become unclean. Had fallen and lain still and then risen and sought to devour the others. Secured in the cache with their small flasks of water, waiting for their parents to return bringing safety and food, the children had no way to flee or hide from an enemy that was locked inside with them. Those who were not entirely eaten had succumbed and risen also, until the entire cache was just filled with those small bodies with sightless, waiting eyes, silent in their decay.
Had the parents returned, they might in their despair have been devoured by their own children when they lifted the cover at last from the cache and reached down to pull them out.
But the parents hadn’t returned.
“How long has the town been silent?” Laban said quietly.
Barak shook his head. Long enough, certainly, for the ashes of the houses the townspeople had burned to grow cold, the smoldering of embers to cease. Long enough for all the bodies of the children in the cache to stir. A day? Several? He wondered if any of their parents still breathed. The men of Walls might have had spears to fight with, but Walls had not suffered a raid since the coming of the Hebrews to the land, and those spears had likely only been wielded against the fish in the lake since the time of their grandfathers. And they would have had women with them, and old men. What chance could they have had, fleeing the dead on those slopes?
A cold, choking guilt settled in his throat to match the cold touch on his calf and the cold fear in his belly. He had arrived too late for this town.
Barak turned and began striding back toward the tents. Omri and Laban followed. “We will build cairns over each body,” he growled as he walked. “Even the burned ones. Dig them out of the ashes if you have to.”
“Are you serious?” Omri exclaimed.
“I am, and you do not want to argue with me, Omri of Zebulun. I am not in an arguing mood.”
“But every body—there must be dozens—”
“At least. See that it’s done. Laban, will you make sure none are missed?”
“If you ask it,” the somber giant said carefully.
Barak gave him a brief, grateful look. “I do ask it.”
“Do you have any idea how long that will take?” Omri snarled.
“It is what the navi would wish.”
“Since when does the navi command the spears?”
Barak turned on him, and his face was lit with such wrath that Omri fell back a step. “The Covenant says to build cairns, we will build cairns!” He was shouting. “Look around you, you fool. Do you want to question God’s ways in this field of ash?” He glanced at Laban. “We will not leave one body unburied! I want none of them left! Am I clear?”
“You are,” Laban murmured. Omri merely gazed at him in shock.
“Gather stones!” Barak shouted. Spun and strode back up the street. Enough of this ash and smoke.
Zadok stood still as a cairn himself amid the ashes and fallen timbers, his spear fallen at his feet. Devora approached wearily until she stood at his side. After a moment she set Mishpat aside near her feet. Straightening, she scrubbed at her face with her hands, trying to smudge away the dirt and ash. Then she just stood there. She watched his chest rise and fall. His eyes were dark pools that gave nothing back when she looked in them. All around them, men with gloves and rolls of tentcloth gathered bodies and shrouded them, bearing them to where Barak was having cairns raised on the shore of the lake. Sometimes the men cast looks at Zadok, and their faces held awe or bewilderment. Those who had seen him the night before had seen how he fought.
“Zadok ben Zefanyah,” Devora said after a while. “I need you.”
Devora reached for the small bronze knife Zadok wore sheathed at his hip. She tugged it free and reached for the nazarite’s hand. Gently she opened his fingers and drew the blade across his palm, making a slit deep enough to bleed for a while. His breathing changed a moment later; it must have taken his body a moment to feel the pain. Then his head turned, and those dark eyes focused on her.
Devora placed the hilt of the knife in Zadok’s hand, pressing it against the cut, then closed his enormous fingers around it. “If there was ever a man of our People who needed a wife to look after him,” she said, “that man is you, Zadok. Why don’t you have one?”
“I could not defend both Shiloh and a woman.” His voice was deep and hoarse. Hearing it was a relief to her. “A day would come, navi, when I would have to break one covenant or the other.”
She nodded and looked out over the ashen street. Saw the men bearing away the last bodies of children. It was too much; she felt as though she were drawing in death through her eyes, aging and crumbling away like ash as she watched. But she couldn’t close her eyes; what waited in the dark behind her eyelids would be far worse.
“What do you see, Zadok? When you close your eyes.”
He watched her for a moment. “They were in the tents.” His eyes shone a moment, surprising her with their moisture. “I ran out to look for my father. They were everywhere. The stench—” He shook his head. “They were crouching over my father, four of them. Outside the Tent of Meeting. They were eating him. Behind them, Eleazar took up the shofar, blew the call. My father had saved his life. I tried to get his body away from the dead, tried to fight them—”
He fell silent.
“I’m sorry,” Devora said.
“I failed him. Every time I face the dead, I fail him.”
“No,” Devora whispered. “Zefanyah would have been proud of you. You are the kind of man he would have liked. The kind he would’ve wanted at his side. I know this, Zadok.”
He just looked bleakly out over the ash.
“I need you, Zadok,” Devora said. The pleading in her voice did not shame her; she had to lean on someone, if only for a moment, or fall over. “I am barely holding it together. Those—children—” She swallowed. “I understand your suffering now. Why you stand still, the way you do. I encountered the dead as a girl, you as a boy. But since, you have gone out time and again to hunt them and raise cairns over them, whenever one has been seen in the land. Wherever Shiloh has sent you. How do you stay on your feet, Zadok? Tell me.”
“I remember wh
o I have to protect,” Zadok said.
Devora laughed coldly, bitterly. Something in her heart cried: But I am a woman! I am the one who is supposed to be protected. But she knew better. She was the navi. Judge and mother of Israel. It was her burden to bring God’s visions to the People and keep them safe. Her eyes hardened, and she stifled her laugh.
“Did you see it, last night, Zadok?” Devora asked, forcing the words out. “The malakh ha-mavet? Did you see it over the settlement?”
“I saw smoke,” Zadok said grimly.
For a moment they both listened to the sounds of the men laboring by the lake.
Zadok wiped the blade of his knife on his cloak and sheathed it. Then bent and took up his spear. “I have taken the nazarite’s vow. It does not matter if God is here or not.” His voice was rough. “Or if the angel of death is here or not. I am here. I have taken the vow.”
Devora let out the breath she’d been holding. His words sounded so much like her own words to Hurriya during the previous night. “All right. If anyone made it out of here alive, where did they go?”
“Kedesh. The town of Refuge,” Zadok said. He was quiet a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was softer. “...I did want a wife once.”
Devora glanced at him, jarred out of her thoughts.
Zadok nodded, his tone strangely subdued. “A woman who lived in Shiloh, who would always live there. I thought—” He glanced at her eyes, then looked away. “I thought that any act of mine would defend both her and the tribe of Levi. Nimri’s raid taught me differently.”
Devora’s eyes widened.
“Me,” she gasped. “You wanted me.”
He just looked at the lake.
Devora recalled Zadok crying out her name as he rushed toward her through the terebinths. She recalled the way his breathing had changed as he’d held her. Yet—she had known him so long. And she had never known this. With a sudden blush, she wondered if other women in Shiloh camp had known. She who saw what God’s eyes saw—might she have been blind to what other women might see? Had her husband known of Zadok’s heart? Had she? Her head spun and she felt a great urge to sit down, but there was nowhere to seat herself that was not covered in the ashes of the dead.