Strangers in the Land

by Stant Litore

  “Navi,” he said with another duck of his head, and then he turned and bolted into a run, flashing past Barak and the gathered men, darting down the slope. Devora found she couldn’t breathe, watching him move. He was fast, fleet as a deer, leaping and ducking through the brush.

  Almost absently Barak gave the chieftains commands, calling to ready the men for the march upriver. But his gaze never left the valley below, and the other tribal leaders walked away slowly, looking over their shoulders.

  At last, only Devora, Barak, and Omri stood on the high rock. Omri’s face was pale with horror, Barak’s awed. Devora, however, felt that she had been struck through the breast with a spear and was now in shock and waiting to feel the pain of it. She glanced once back the way she’d come. Shomar’s head was down; he was grazing among the rocks. Hurriya sat huddled on his back, watching Devora with eyes glazed with pain and vision.

  “Holy God, the man can run,” Barak breathed.

  Devora swallowed and turned her eyes back to the valley. Had she been a young woman, she might have offered to run herself, hoping that God would bless her and shield her as his navi and bring his words through her to the settlement.

  Once again, Zadok carried her burdens for her.

  The nazarite was sprinting along the outcropping now, keeping the low stone bulwark between him and the dead; there were perhaps only a few spear casts between him and the southern wall where the dead moaned and beat on the stone. He would have to run northwest along the stone, then round the far end of the outcropping and make for the west wall, hoping either that the dead would be too preoccupied to see him or that his legs would carry him so swiftly to the wall that he could be hoisted up before they reached him.

  It was desperate.

  And wondrous.

  She watched Zadok’s powerful body race along the rock. In him she saw his father, Zefanyah, who had danced the spear so furiously on the training ground that none of the other nazarites could best him. Zefanyah, who afterward would stand laughing among the other men on the packed dirt, sweating, his chest heaving, until he would glance over to where Devora watched with the other girls and smile at her.

  And she saw her husband, Lappidoth, as a young man, slaying the corpses that had come for his cattle, his bronzed skin shining in the sun, his blows powerful and sure. His eyes full of purpose and will and the determination to hold firmly to what was his.

  “I have never seen a man move like that,” Omri muttered.

  “Until this last night and day, you had never seen a nazarite,” Devora said, her heart swelling with pride even amid her fear.

  “He is one man,” Barak said. “There must be four hundred beating on that wall. At least.”

  “He is Zadok ben Zefanyah,” Devora said.

  “He’s rounding the end of that rock,” Barak said quietly.

  Below them, Zadok came clear of the rock, but even as he did, several figures lurched out of a fissure. Eight, nine of them, barring his way. Devora found she couldn’t breathe. There had been dead hiding in the rocks. Possibly someone working the fields had taken refuge in some den within the rocks and been followed and eaten, and the dead had stayed there until stirred by the sound of Zadok’s footsteps and his breathing.

  Now they were upon him.

  A hush fell over the hill. Devora’s blood was loud in her ears. She could have forbidden him to go. She was the only one whose forbidding he would have heeded. Yet she knew that this would have broken him.

  The moaning of the dead was faint but terrible in her ears.

  She watched helplessly as Zadok leapt among the dead, his spear flashing in the sun. Two figures lay still on the ground. He spun and danced—he danced—darting forward and back, leaping over one corpse that had tumbled to its knees, landing on his feet and bringing the spear up, stabbing with the bronze head, wielding the butt end like a weapon itself, knocking corpses back. Then he wielded the spear one-handed—though its weight was not light—and his other hand plucked out his knife, and that too flashed in the sun as he leapt and fought.

  “He’s going to make it,” Omri breathed. “He’s actually going to make it.”

  Zadok fought in utter silence. No raiding cry, no prayer, no voice that came faint to Devora’s ears. Just focused, silent discipline.

  “Navi!” Barak gasped.

  “That does it,” Omri muttered.

  Some of the dead were breaking away from the south wall, lurching out over the open grass, their attention drawn by the moans and snarls of the corpses that had closed on Zadok. Devora bit her lip and prayed silently, her palms damp with sweat. Below the ridge came the sounds of men shouldering their burdens, unaware of the grim battle the nazarite was fighting.

  But now Zadok thrust his knife into the face of one of his assailants, and it appeared to stick in the corpse’s skull, for he shoved the corpse aside, abandoning the blade, and broke free, bolting out over the grass. The way he’d run before had stirred the admiration of his watchers, but now he truly ran. It couldn’t be less than two hundred strides between the rock outcropping and the west wall, but he tore across the ground like a stallion in full gallop. Veering north to buy time as the lurching corpses moved toward him, a reeking herd flowing along the wall and over the grass.

  “He won’t make it,” Barak said softly.

  Omri just shook his head.

  “He will,” Devora said forcefully. “He will.”

  Run, Zadok. She mouthed the words, without sound. Run, Zadok. Run, damn you.

  He had perhaps eighty strides to go—but there were dead all around him now, and dead between him and the wall. He dodged and darted between them, sometimes knocking one aside with his spear, then spinning past. Devora saw the dead thicken about him, and she felt almost dizzy.

  “Run!” she cried aloud.

  She saw the sunlight on his shoulders and back where he shone with sweat. He dodged and the point of his spear cut the air. Then the dead were thick between him and the wall, and he didn’t hesitate, didn’t turn back or flee. The nazarite ran directly into the corpses, wielding his spear and using the sheer force of his run to shove the walking corpses aside.

  Omri cursed. They say a nazarite fights like ten men, Omri had told Zadok when the two of them met, both taunting him and questioning.

  No, Zadok had answered. I fight like twenty.

  Now Zadok proved it. He spun on his heels faster than Devora had ever seen any man move, ducking and thrusting among the dead, his lethal bronze slicing and piercing scalp and face, throwing corpses to the earth. Still they closed on him, hands grasping for his shoulders, his arms, uncaring that he was armed. Their fingers brushed him, defiling his skin, yet he struck with both blade and shaft of the spear, as though it were only heads of summer wheat touching him and the spear he held a scythe. More corpses fell. But now he could not move forward farther, so he stood and fought. The moaning dead pressed in on him, the ones behind shoving those before them, and after a moment Zadok went down beneath the sheer weight of their bodies, and Devora let out a low cry; she couldn’t help it, it tore its way up her throat. She saw the corpses bending over that piece of earth where he’d fallen, only thirty strides from the wall. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. Something was tight and hard in her breast. She remembered the scorched, unrecognizable face of Zefanyah as he lay stretched out on the ground in a line of dead.

  “He rises!” Barak yelled. “He rises! Navi! I can see the sun on his spear!”

  Devora gasped. It was true; she could see it too. The flashes of light as the spear thrust up from the ground, twice, then again. And then with a roar she could hear even from here, even over the wailing of the dead, Zadok ben Zefanyah, nazarite since he was seven, burst to his feet, the dead still clutching him, one of them even with its jaws about his left arm, blood running down to his left hand. Yet Zadok stood, screaming hoarsely, thrusting against the dead with the shaft of his weapon. His hair had come loose and it swept about him as he fought and turned,
hair longer and more flowing than any woman’s, hair that had never been cut. Bloodied now about his shoulders. Dead grasped at it, pulling his head back; a corpse tore into his left shoulder with its teeth. Still he remained on his feet as they ate at him, still he roared and battered at them with his spear, using it more now as a pole and shield than as a thrusting weapon. Bodies lay still about his legs, dead he’d silenced, yet others clambered on top of the fallen to clutch at him. He drove the butt of the spear back, crushing the face of the corpse that had his shoulder, destroying its head; he shook his arm and shoulder like a man shrugging off a cloak, and the body fell away. Blood ran down over his chest from the deep bite in his shoulder. The dead still held his hair and his left arm, yet he turned, and gripping his spear near its head, he drove the point like a dagger into the eye of a corpse behind him. He was bleeding, he was unclean, still he fought. Still he fought to get the navi’s message to that settlement.

  People had come to the west wall now and were hurling shards of pottery and ewers and even beams of wood down on the dead who moaned between the wall and Zadok, though with little effect.

  “He is still fighting,” Barak breathed. “He is still fighting.”

  “He is a nazarite,” Devora said again. Everything in her numb.

  Then the dead tugged Zadok beneath them a second time, and on the ridge Devora and Barak and Omri waited, but there was no flash of sun on Zadok’s spear nor any surge of the man to his feet. Only the dead, bending over that spot and feeding, covering Zadok so that his body could not be seen through them. A pain sharp near Devora’s heart. His body. Zadok’s body. It would be left down there, to be fed on, to rise—if the dead left any of him intact.

  With a cry, Devora turned and moved as quickly as the her soreness would allow, running for her horse.

  “Navi, no!” Barak tore after her.

  In a moment Devora felt the man’s weight slam into her, bearing her to the ground on her belly, driving the breath from her. Wheezing, she kicked wildly, but he crushed her to the earth.

  “We have to get his body!” she screamed. “We have to get his body!”

  “It’s no good! Be still, you fool woman!” His growl in her ear.

  “No! We have to!” She shrieked and thrashed under the chieftain’s weight and heard him cursing wildly as he fought to hold her. All she could think of, the one terror in her heart, was that Zadok was down there being torn and eaten, that she had sent him to die and could not leave him there, not like that. Zadok, who had loved her and sworn to her, who had been her defender and her right arm and her strong cedar to lean on, these last days of their nightmare journey into the north. She could not leave his body there among the dead. She could not betray him so.

  Sobbing breathlessly, she kept fighting, and Barak wrenched her wrists over her head, pinning them in a grip that she could not escape. With his other hand he wound leather tightly about her wrists and knotted it; a strap perhaps from the leather beneath his breast-piece or from his greaves. She spat and bucked but could not dislodge the man. Felt him lifting her, carrying her over his shoulder as she kicked and pummeled his back with her bound hands.

  “Stop fighting me,” Barak whispered fiercely. “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing.”

  She kept struggling, barely hearing him. The ground moved dizzily beneath her as he strode, carrying her toward her horse. And still she screamed with the moaning of the dead in her ears. Screamed her throat raw in protest, screamed to Zadok and to Barak and to God who was watching somewhere in his terrible silence.

  PART 4: ALONG THE TUMBLING WATER

  THE WITHERING LAND

  THE MEN moved north, with Devora tied to her saddle, her wrists thonged to the pommel. Hurriya clung to her waist from behind her. North of Refuge there was no road and no town—just the broad valley of the Tumbling Water, a strip of well-watered earth a quarter mile wide, nestled between steep hillsides. The land leveled out for a while as they followed the water north, and the river here flowed slowly. On the west bank there was a cart track that led them past small vineyards that drank in the hot sun, between water and hill. Behind each vineyard could be seen a low house of cedar or pine, like a tired bear with its back to the steep rising of the land.

  In any other year, this might have been a cheerful place. At this season the vines would have been green and lush for harvest, with fat clusters of grapes almost too heavy for a man to lift.

  But Devora felt no cheer. She sat her horse rigidly. She was uncomfortable and sore. But that was nothing compared to the humiliation hot in her breast. She rode beside the men, tied to her horse, like any slave. With her wrists bound, she could not lift her hands to cover her face, though she felt their eyes on her. She felt naked. Any grief she might show would be terribly public.

  And as she’d told Barak, in all things made or done by God or by men there was a message that could be discerned. The message in the strap about her wrists was clear to her. Surely she would not be respected as the navi, not here, not among these men. Not now that Zadok was gone. Zadok’s presence too had been a message, a sign of her authority, a sign that she was set apart. That sign was gone. The men might look at her now and see only a woman in a dirtied, stained white dress. Once Omri even rode to her and sneered, “Just a woman.” She didn’t move or look at him, and she dreaded for a moment that he would grip her thigh as he had done once, but at that moment Barak’s voice came sharp from where he rode a little ahead. “Omri!” And cursing under his breath, the man let her be.

  As she watched him go, Devora felt the bite of anger. Only another woman. Prone to tears or hysterical screaming, of value because her body created life, but not to be trusted outside a man’s tent. What if, seeing her so, the men stopped listening to her? Certainly Omri had; his brief moment of awe that night in Walls had not survived seeing her screaming like a slave girl as Barak tied her and tossed her onto her horse. How could she help her People if her words to them were no longer the words of one who sees what God sees, but only the words of a woman who rides without a man beside her?

  Her gaze flicked down to Mishpat, which was still strapped to the side of her saddle. The blade had not been taken from her—for she was not a slave. And though she could not reach it, the sight of that sword hardened her. She was still Devora of Israel, whether free with a nazarite and the mighty presence of the Law behind her, or trussed to her saddle like a raid captive.

  And even her humiliation, even her grief, were small things compared to her dread at what she now saw before her and behind her and on every side. For this was not a lush valley ready for harvest. The dead had been here first. And with them, its sere wings scything through the vines, the malakh ha-mavet. Where its shadow had fallen, the vines were withered and dry as brambles; there were no lights in the houses.

  Barak grew visibly tense as the slow tread of the men brought them farther upriver, and Devora recalled his words at the lakeside: I am a vintner who has been eleven days from my vineyard while dead prowl about it, and I fear for the harvest. This was Barak’s country: the vineyards of the north Yarden, famed in Israel. The people of Walls, Hebrew and heathen, had led the great herd of the dead straight up this valley, where the vineyards awaited them like a long row of riverbank blossoms to be trampled. There would be no harvest.

  As they passed up the cart track beside the dying fields, silent as mourners, they came upon strange sights. A walking corpse that crouched amid the vines and dug at the ground with its fingers, with relentless, slow movements that seemed utterly without purpose. The corpse did not even glance up as Omri approached it from behind and drove a spear into its skull.

  After that, they found a corpse pinned, half-crushed, beneath a wagon with a broken axle; perhaps the man had died there. Now he lay on his back, the wagon holding him at the waist. The corpse writhed and growled at the men who passed, twisting to the left and to the right, struggling helplessly to get on its belly and crawl toward the living. The men at the head of the line st
opped and stared at it a few moments. For once Devora felt nothing seeing the corpse twist and strain to get at them. It was only one more corpse in a land that was itself becoming a corpse.

  It didn’t really matter.

  After a few moments, Laban strode forward with his axe and took off the thing’s head. The head rolled away from the wagon and stopped with its face toward the sky. The jaws didn’t move, but the milky, dead eyes did. Laban growled and brought the axe down on its brow, swinging like a man splitting wood. Hurriya glanced away with a shudder; Devora just looked numbly on.

  As the line of men began to shuffle uneasily past the wagon and the still corpse, Barak detailed five men to make a cairn. Then he rode to Devora’s side and drew a small knife from a sheath he’d strapped to his shin. With calm, measured movements, he set the knife to her bonds and cut them; Devora felt the cold of the bronze against her skin, but Barak was careful and he did not cut her. When her hands were free, she lifted them slowly, rubbing her wrists, wincing as life came back to her numb hands, hurting them.

  “I am sorry,” Barak said quietly. He had the grace at least to look ashamed. “He died bravely.”

  “He died.” Devora’s voice sounded small to her, and hopeless.

  Barak said nothing.

  “His body will rise.”

  “I know.” The war-leader coughed. “When we return, we will end that and raise a cairn for him.”

  “I should never have let him go.” Devora closed her eyes.

  Barak rode beside her a moment, as though he were trying to think of words to say. Then he sighed and kicked his horse into a canter and left them. Hurriya squeezed Devora slightly, her arm about Devora’s waist, and whispered, “He died serving those he loved. The gods will remember him. Your God will too.”

  They stopped briefly about two hours before dusk, and the men shared some of their diminished rations without fires or means of heating them. Sore and exhausted, Devora passed Hurriya’s waterskin to her, then lay down in the weeds by the riverbank and looked at the sky. She didn’t want to eat. She couldn’t cry, couldn’t sleep.