by Stant Litore
After a while, someone settled in the grass beside her, and she felt a hand stroking her arm gently through her sleeve. Soft humming. That go-to-sleep song of Hurriya’s. Devora didn’t turn her head to look at the girl, she just listened. The grief and terror and fatigue of the morning and of the previous night hit her all at once. Withered fields. An entire settlement, gone. That girl who longed to be a woman, leaping to her death. Zadok, her Zadok, dead. Beneath all those feeding corpses. Tears stung against her eyelids; she rebuked them. She yearned suddenly for Lappidoth, for his strong arms about her, holding her so that she could sleep without fear. Letting her hide her face against his chest so that she could weep without shame.
But here she had only Hurriya and her melody and the soft touch of the girl’s hand through her sleeve.
“Thank you,” she said.
Hurriya stopped humming. “We Canaanites don’t let a woman grieve alone,” she whispered.
“Neither do we Hebrews.” Devora reached and gripped the girl’s own arm through her dress, returning the touch. “Did you really see them, girl? Survivors from Walls?”
“Yes. With the dead behind them.”
Hurriya and Devora were silent for a while. Then the Canaanite said, “Tell me about this God of yours, who sends these visions.”
Devora opened her eyes and gazed at Hurriya’s deathly pale face and the empty sky above her. In her dress the girl looked nearly skeletal. Her eyes were weary and glazed with the slow return of her fever, but they held no hatred, only concern. A tenderness for her touched Devora’s heart. The girl was ill and fading a little, yet she had come to where Devora lay and had hummed that song for her. This was a woman who had already walked the length of the land once, bleeding and carrying a child. Her fever and illness were unlikely to keep her from doing what she felt she needed to do for those who needed her.
And Devora did need her.
They were two women alone. And they had been through fire and death and terror together. Only Lappidoth had ever seen Devora’s heart as naked as this girl had seen it.
She should be caring for and comforting and guiding this new navi. Instead, she was being comforted by her. Devora sighed and sat up, drawing her responsibilities back about her even as she had often seen Hurriya draw that salmah about her thin frame. “We know little of God, even we who see things that only God sees,” she told the girl. “We only know that he’s made promises and that when he’s made promises in the past he’s kept them.”
Hurriya was quiet a moment. “What promises has he made?” she asked.
“That we will possess the land always,” Devora said wearily. “That we will have children, as many as stars in the winter sky. That he will dwell here among us.”
Those promises seemed so empty to her now. The land they possessed was reduced to withering fields and ash. An entire settlement had lost its children. And her own womb was barren. Sarah had borne a child out of the aging desert of her body—but that was only a story of the past.
Maybe Sarah had been right to laugh bitterly.
“That your people will always possess this land,” Hurriya repeated, an edge to her voice. “Your God doesn’t love my people. Why then does he curse me with visions? Does he think I haven’t suffered enough?”
Devora could hear the tremor in Hurriya’s voice. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Before they could say more, a short call on the shofar interrupted, summoning the men and the two women to their feet. It was time to move on. The sun above was hot and lethal in the sky, and it was all Devora could do just to get to her feet. Yet she turned and took Hurriya’s arms in her hands, feeling the fever warmth of her through her sleeves, and lifted her to her feet as well. The woman almost fainted from the effort of rising. Devora didn’t think she could have stood on her own. For just a moment Hurriya leaned against her, and Devora allowed it, a protective fire in her heart.
THE VINEYARD
BARAK KEPT the pace quick, leading the men in their long file along the rising riverbank past fields of barley and vineyards that were dying away like weeds in a fire. His shadow stretched out before him to his right now, long like the shadow of a tree. It was late, yet somewhere ahead there might be refugees fleeing the dead—if that heathen girl really was seeing things God saw. They had covered a lot of ground this day, and unlike any men and women fleeing Walls, they’d had no need to hide from the dead; they’d slain those they’d passed. No doubt the survivors of that burned settlement had traveled slower, hiding when they had to and always watching for some chance to shed pursuit and double back toward Walls. They might even be within reach this very night.
And Barak had another reason for haste. They were very near now to his own vineyard. And still all the land about them showed evidence of blight and death. His anxiety clawed at him. He had to know. He had to know for sure. As he took note of whose fields they passed, he ceased to think any more of the heathen girl or her refugees or of the navi, or of how Zadok had fought as though he had no fear of any corpse. His whole mind was bent on his vineyard, nearer with each step.
When they reached his vines at last, the sun was already kissing the hills with fire. Though Barak had always loved the sunsets of the Galilee—had often stood outside his door with his wife to watch them before taking her inside to his bed—he did not love this one. The burn of it along the ridges made him think of the fire at Walls. Made him think of the fire that had devoured the gods Hadassah’s mother had cherished. Made him think of the nights afterward when he sat silent by his hearth, watching the coals, grieving for his woman. Made him think of things lost and never recovered.
And what Barak saw now in his field, he did not know how to bear.
He rode Ager out into the vineyard a way, then slid from his horse and staggered toward the first row of his vines like a drunken man, swaying on his feet. Behind him he heard Laban riding up and down the line of men, urging them to keep moving. Omri just sat his horse, watching his war-leader and shaking his head grimly. Devora nudged Shomar past him, and Barak heard Omri growl at her, “Your Shiloh God has abandoned us, woman.”
But none of this made much impression on Barak ben Abinoam. He stumbled on toward the heart of his field.
Nothing lived in that field, nothing at all; the ground was dry, the earth itself drained of color and richness. The shriveled remains of vines limp upon the dead earth like weeds upon a shore, or hanging brown from their straightening poles like the skins serpents shed and leave behind. Barak lurched through this wasteland of his crop like one of the dead himself, then stopped and just gazed at the dead rows. Only when he felt the dry, brittle soil against his knees did he realize he’d stumbled. For a time he just knelt there in the midst of his desiccated field.
“Barak? Barak?”
A woman’s voice, coming through the roaring in his ears as though from a great distance. Barak ben Abinoam turned his head, saw Devora standing near, and behind her Omri and others of his men. Her lips moved, but this time he did not hear her words. He should get up, he should go to find his house, his beautiful home of cedar and thatch. But he didn’t yet have the strength. The dryness of his vineyard had crept inside him the way a desert wind can creep through the flap of a tent that’s been poorly fastened.
He reached down, took a handful of gray soil. It felt more like sand against his palm than dirt. A moan rose in his throat.
“You,” he groaned. “You are more like a heathen whore than the God of the Ark, the God this fool woman prates of. I left this field, I went to lead your People, I took down the spear.” His voice rose, he was nearly shouting, venting his fury and despair without rising from his knees. “I stood in that burning settlement, I stood at Walls, I fought. How can you let my harvest wither? Are you not God of planting and of harvest? You took my Hadassah, you took the harvest I expected of her womb. And this—you take this.” He lifted his eyes to the silhouettes the hills made against the darkening sky, that dark, unknowable expanse from w
hich came rain and day’s heat and which the evening’s first stars did so little to light. “What covenants do you keep, you whore?” he cried.
He saw the navi step before him. Saw her lift her hand. Then the left side of his face rang from the slap.
“Be silent, you fool,” the navi snapped.
Barak just looked at her a moment. Then he began to laugh, loudly, the laughter building from deep in his belly. He just knelt there and laughed until tears poured down his face.
Devora watched him, aghast, and when he fell silent at last, gasping for breath, she hissed, “Get up. Barak, we can’t stay here. Grieve tonight in your tent, not now.”
He shook his head. His hands clenched in the soil.
“Barak!”
“You cannot ask that of me,” he breathed. “You cannot. This is my land, these are my vines. This is my house, my land.” He would not look up at her. “Omri can lead the men.”
“Omri can lead the men of Zebulun. But who will lead the men of Naphtali? Issachar? If not you?”
A long silence.
“Find another,” he whispered.
“Barak ben Abinoam!” Strain in her voice. “Whether God and you keep covenant or not, you have made a covenant with me, and I call you to fulfill it.”
He met her gaze. “Why? Why ride when I have neither field nor wife to defend?”
“Defend the People,” the navi cried. “Defend the Covenant!”
“I have no Covenant,” he said. “God keeps no Covenant.”
“Then defend me. Help me, Barak. Help me take these men against the dead.”
Barak gave her that same empty look. Then a shrill cry tore the air—a woman’s scream of panic. Barak felt his breath catch in his throat. His body stilled, listening. The air erupted with moaning, the distant wailing of the hungry dead.
Barak stirred at last, rising to his feet. He stared hard across the vineyard. “That came from the house,” he whispered, going cold with horror. “Hadassah.”
It seemed impossible to him in that moment that only half a year ago he had stood in this vineyard toiling beneath the sun, near where he stood now, and one of the field slaves had run to him, calling his name. The man had been out of breath, and it was a few moments before Barak could grasp the man’s message—that something was terribly wrong with his pregnant wife. Barak had tossed his pruning tools and his gloves to the dark soil and bolted for the house, charging down the long row between the vines, panting for breath. That had been the day God had taken his wife from him, the day he had arrived almost too late. The fever had burned through her all too quickly; when he stood in the door gasping for breath, she had turned her glassy eyes to him and whispered, “I’m glad you’re here.”
The last words he’d heard her say.
Now Barak leapt to Ager’s back and swung the horse about so hard the gelding nearly foundered. He sent Ager galloping hard between the rows of shriveled vines, his blood cold. He had to know who had screamed, what woman had cried out from his house.
He heard Devora’s horse galloping behind him, heard her cry, “Quickly, Shomar!” but paid her no heed. In moments he could see a long house of cedar above the dead vines, and then he was out of the withered stalks and riding toward the door of the house, but others were there before him. The stench of them ripe in the air. He caught a glimpse of a living figure slipping through the door of the house and slamming it shut. Corpses staggered after it, throwing themselves at the door. Others beat at the walls of the house with their hands or hurled their bodies into the wood. Thirty or more. Some of them naked, their bodies torn and chewed, terrible wounds. Others disheveled, their clothing rotting on their backs, their bodies rotting within their clothes. Another shriek from within the house. Roaring, his whole mind filled with Hadassah’s memory and Hadassah’s death, Barak ben Abinoam lifted his spear and rode down the dead.
HEBER THE KENITE’S STORY
THE NEXT few moments were the most terrifying Devora had known since childhood. There were shouts behind her, but her whole mind was fixed on the man riding hard before her, out of reach. And on the dead slamming their bodies into that house. She heard the shriek from within, and Devora herself screamed silently as Shomar bore her toward the ravenous dead at a gallop.
Ahead of her, Barak leapt from his horse, landing on his feet with his spear clutched in both hands, and then he was at the door, wielding that bronze weapon with a ferocity Devora had never seen him display before. The butt of his spear slammed hard into one corpse’s belly, sending it flying from the door; then the sharp bronze point drove into another corpse’s skull. Devora slowed her horse, and Shomar reared with a shrill animal scream as several corpses turned from the wall and lurched toward her, their hands reaching for her, for the horse, for them both. The stench of them ripe in the air.
“Hold on!” she gasped to Hurriya. Unsheathed, Mishpat whined through the air.
Another shriek from within the house, then an abrupt end to the cry.
Heart pounding, Devora took off one corpse’s scalp, and the little circle of hair and flesh spun through the air. Still the unclean thing came at her, growling like an animal. Its brain exposed and pulsing. Then there were dead all about the horse, grasping at her legs and Hurriya’s. All those murky eyes staring up at them from faces that had been bitten or chewed half away. The Canaanite took up a waterskin, nearly full, in both hands, and brought it smashing down on one corpse’s head, using its weight to knock the corpse away. It staggered back, then caught its balance and came at them again. Devora lifted her voice in song, shakily, but felt no desert ferocity, only raw, pounding terror as the corpses’ fingers caught at her dress, tearing it, trying to pull her from the saddle. Mishpat slashed across faces and hands.
A glance showed Barak standing in his door, having forced it open, and spearing the dead as they came at him. He kicked one hard in the belly, driving it back as he wrenched his spear free of another corpse.
There were shouts behind them in the field, men running on foot. And a horse’s hooves, galloping hard. Then Laban was with them, his axe swinging in the air, splitting one of the faces that had been snarling up at Devora and Hurriya. Hurriya bent low, slamming the waterskin against the hands that grasped at her; then one of the corpses got its fingers in her long hair, and with a scream she was wrenched from Shomar’s back. Devora reached for her and caught only a fistful of green dress that tore away in her hand. “Hurriya!” she shrieked.
After a panicked heartbeat, the navi slid from Shomar’s back into the dead, their hands on her flesh, her gown, making her unclean. Screaming, she carved with her sword, cutting away the terrible dead faces. Hurriya. Hurriya!
Cold breath on her throat and the cold of a hand clutching one side of her neck, pulling her toward the corpse’s teeth.
Devora spun into the corpse, saw its eyes inches from her own, her sword trapped between her body and its cold flesh; panicked, she brought the hilt up and smashed the hard bone into its face. She shoved the corpse back with a strength that only terror could give her. Another cold hand on her shoulder, pulling her back, wrenching her from her feet; she fell. For a moment she lay on her back and saw their two faces above her, and screaming she brought Mishpat up and cut into them. Quickly she rolled to the side and got back to her knees, barely keeping herself from vomiting. One of the dead she’d cut stumbled after her, and she drove her sword into its head like a spear. Its toppling weight tore Mishpat from her grasp and she scrambled to the corpse’s side and retrieved her sword with a desperate pull at its hilt. Heaving for breath, she looked up and saw Laban with his arm about the Canaanite, pulling her up onto his horse, her dress torn open at her left side. The girl was shaking and weeping; four dead lay still, their heads cloven by Laban’s axe. Drawing in a ragged breath, Devora realized it was over.
Laban rode to her and leaned half out of his saddle, extending his hand to her.
Devora shook her head. “No, unclean—” She glanced at the weeping girl. “Did
any of them bite her?”
“No.” Laban’s voice was a deep rumble. “Take my hand, navi. Uncleanness doesn’t matter now, not up here where the dead have touched everything. Another week and we will all be unclean, whether we live or die.”
Devora gazed up at him. The deep brown of his eyes, his weathered face. Once before a man had offered her help when she was unclean. She remembered Zefanyah tossing her the waterskin when she’d left Shiloh, that time the old navi had banned her from the camp. She remembered the warm leather of the waterskin in her hands, how she had cherished it those days and nights when she was alone in the heather.
Laban’s face too was kind.
“I can’t,” she whispered. Pleading. “The Law is all we have. Our only tent. Without it, we are only leaves in a high wind.” She pressed one hand to the earth, splaying her fingers, and forced herself to her feet. Hurriya’s tearful eyes gazed at her as she rose.
“Are you all right?” Devora asked her.
The Canaanite nodded shakily.
“Thank God.” Devora yearned suddenly to hold her, to pull her close. Instead, she turned toward the house, saw Barak still standing in the door, leaning on his spear, his chest heaving as he caught his breath. The dead lay about his feet in a heap of reeking flesh and tattered cloth. His gaze met hers and there was a look about him that she had never seen in anyone but Zadok.
He cast his spear aside with a bitter expression and turned to go into the house, and Devora stumbled toward the door, stepping with a shudder over the bodies strewn about it. She heard Laban’s deep voice and Hurriya’s faint, exhausted voice behind her, and then footsteps, and she waited at the door for the Canaanite. Hurriya was as white as if she had no blood left in her body. Her legs shook within the remains of her dress. Devora caught her arm, pulled her near, put her arm about her to steady her, and they went in. Behind them Laban turned and rode back toward the men approaching on foot over the field.