Day of War

by Cliff Graham

  He sat forward. “Do not be afraid. Just tell me what you see.”

  She glared at him with her black eyes, then slammed her face against the floor. She stared into the depths of the earth. Her hands scraped at the dirt, her fingernails snapping with the pressure. “I see a spirit coming up out of the ground.”

  She had bitten through her lip; blood leaked onto the dirt by her face.

  “What does he look like?”

  Her eyes went wide with terror. She looked back up at him, blood streaming down her chin and neck. “An old man with a robe.”

  Then she stood and wandered out of the room into the night, as if dazed.

  Saul was overcome. He laid down, face to the earth. He heard something shuffle, and then a log on the fire crackled. The ground became hot under his face, and he felt someone standing over him. It was the prophet. He could feel the power of his presence.

  “Why do you disturb me and bring me up?” Samuel’s rich, heavy tone resounded in the room, even more pure than it had been in life.

  Saul could not raise his head to look at him; he was too afraid. His own voice was weak and frail: “I am in great distress. The Philistines are coming against me, and Yahweh has turned away from me. He no longer answers, either through prophets or through dreams. I have summoned you so that you can tell me what to do, as you did in the old days.”

  He heard the prophet sigh. “Why do you consult me now that you are the Lord’s enemy? He has done what he predicted through me. The Lord has torn the kingdom from your hand and given it to another.” Samuel’s voice became louder. “He has given it to David.”

  Saul felt tears on his cheeks. He wanted to protest, but there was no point.

  Samuel continued. “Because you did not obey the Lord or carry out his judgment against the Amalekites, the Lord has done this to you today.”

  Into Saul’s mind flashed the image of the Amalekite king, Agag, kneeling before him, at his mercy, the orders from the prophet clear: spare no one. But Saul had wanted so much—he wanted the prize, wanted the Amalekites as slaves. Surely Yahweh would understand. But all that followed had been darkness. Saul began to weep.

  Samuel’s voice became even louder. “The Lord has handed both you and Israel over to the Philistines. This time tomorrow, you and your sons will be with me. The army of Israel will be given to the Philistines.”

  There was a breeze, a footstep, and the fire flickered again. And Saul knew he was alone.

  The two men outside and the woman came into the hut not long afterward. They found their king lying on his face, weeping. They lifted him up to a sitting position and tried to get him to drink while the woman set about relighting the fire.

  “Yahweh has become my enemy,” Saul muttered to his men.

  They looked at each other, then continued steadying him. He rocked back and forth, tears trickling down his beard.

  The medium had reignited her fire and now walked over to where Saul sat, still quaking, his teeth chattering. Nervous, clearly desperate for them to leave, she spoke quietly. “Your servant has obeyed you and summoned the prophet. Now honor me and eat some bread before you go.”

  He shook his head. “I will not eat.”

  “Lord, you need nourishment for our journey back. Please consider eating,” one of his companions said.

  Saul’s entire countenance had changed. He no longer carried himself with authority; he now looked like a deserted and lonely old man. The gray in his beard had seemed to increase. “I will eat something,” he conceded dejectedly. “Perhaps some bread and meat.”

  She set about preparing a meal while the two men helped their king to a bed in the corner. Saul collapsed onto the bed and lay still. The woman slaughtered a calf outside and began preparing a platter of meat and bread, unleavened in her haste. When the meal was ready, the men ate, helping their master with his own meal. He went through the motions and said nothing.

  The hour was late. When the men had finished, they helped Saul stand and wrap himself in his traveling cloak. The food had revived him somewhat. One of Saul’s companions gave the woman a shekel of silver for her trouble. They stepped with their master into the night.

  The medium watched them leave the meadow and disappear into the forest, then returned inside.

  The fire was roaring with the fresh wood that had been laid on it. She settled onto a stool next to the flames and stared at the fire. The events of the evening had shaken her. Before, when she’d consulted the ob, the spirit who consulted the dead, she had been in complete control. Her customers were always impressed.

  Tonight, when the figure had appeared, it had been something outside of her power. She’d felt terror in its presence, not control. Something deep had been awakened.

  Her mind wandered back to the tall king. He’d looked even more frightened than she had been when the old man suddenly appeared from the bowels of the earth. He had not told her what the prophet had said to him; perhaps it was something so awful that he could not speak it. This was something far beyond her understanding, and as she felt the shadows of the deepening night begin to creep through her window, she threw another log on the fire and began her preparations for bed.

  Her sleep that night was fitful, full of images of an old man angrily emerging from the land of the dead with blazing eyes and a draped mantle.

  SIXTEEN

  “We will camp on the other side,” David said as they approached the gates of Gath. “It would be better to go around, but we need them to see us and tell Achish that we did not defect to Saul.”

  Benaiah and the Three nodded, though Shammah looked concerned. “There is a festival to Ashtoreth, the Philistine goddess of fertility, being celebrated tonight,” he said. “It might be dangerous for the men. It is unclean for warriors to touch women in time of war, and —”

  David waved him off. The fiery evening sun hung suspended between the clouds and the earth. “We will move quickly through the city.”

  They entered a very different world as soon as they passed the city gates. Thousands of people thronged around them, pouring wine over them, showering them with goods and services to purchase and taste and delight in. The festival had brought many from the plains of Philistia, all coming for the carnal delights offered. Merchants tried to pull them to their tables and barter for captured treasures. David had given the men strict orders not to speak with anyone, and David walked at the front of the army, leading the columns forward through the crowd.

  Music from every instrument echoed through the torch-lit streets as nightfall enclosed them at last. There were instruments that resembled the Hebrews’ pipes bored out of wood and bone like a halil, bronze trumpets and a stringed instrument that resembled a harp, which Benaiah knew his own people called a kinnor. There were other instruments he did not recognize made of bone and wood that produced a sound Benaiah considered too chaotic to be actual music. The air seemed filthy and burdened with the noise, as though one could not catch a clean breath of cool air in the city.

  There were statues of Dagon, the chief Philistine god, half man and half fish, leering through the shadows at those worshiping him. The stone idols were carved with such tremendous detail that Benaiah was half afraid they would awaken and chase his men through the streets, driving out those who worshiped the God who claimed to rule over the desert, the mountains, and the sea. There were statues of Ashtoreth carried everywhere, along with idols of Baal-zebub. Women stripped off their clothing and clung to the idols, as though willing the statues to lie with them and conceive. There were screams of ecstasy, many people engaging in sexual acts of worship dedicated to the idols in the middle of the narrow streets, and the army had to march around them.

  Benaiah shoved and elbowed his way through with Keth beside him. Prostitutes clung to his chest and begged for money. Some covered his head with their garments, but he pushed them aside and shouted to the men around him to keep the ranks tight and their satchels close. Even so, he saw the eyes of the men darting to each fem
ale body they passed. And hundreds of women swarmed them, some not even prostitutes but women of the city worshiping their gods and drunk with wine.

  David let Joab take the lead in the march and walked back down the ranks, calling out to his men, clapping them on the shoulders, reminding them that they would be home soon and needed to keep marching, needed to make it to the other side of Gath. There would be enough prizes to take later; there was no time for distraction now. One soldier ducked away from the ranks and followed a prostitute, but David ran after him, yelled into his face, and pointed at the column, and the man returned to the march.

  Benaiah did his best to help. There were too many. It was too dark. Music, strange music, pounded his ears. He tried to ignore it. He saw Keth, his own face tense, pushing away the flocks of women and merchants who pressed them and would not give up. A woman clung to his neck; he shoved her. Another grabbed at his waist, and he shoved her as well. He shouted orders to the commanders nearby to keep their men close.

  Josheb, Shammah, and Eleazar moved among the ranks and protected the men as David was. But it was too dark, too hard to see what was happening. The men would fall. We should have waited until morning. What was David thinking? That cursed music kept playing, louder now, joined by more lyres, instruments of hollowed bone, and drums made out of skin. His eyes clouded, and he pushed away another prostitute. There were so many of them, dressed in red and purple. Spices and perfumes filled his senses, and he desperately tried to escape … but Sherizah was not there, only darkness and red and purple.

  Despite all this, they passed through most of Gath, through the music and colors, with David calling out to them in his loudest voice to follow him, just keep their eyes forward, and they would make it. He pleaded with them. To his surprise, Benaiah found himself believing they were going to come through this and emerge on the other side.

  But then they passed a large and ornate house, with many impossibly beautiful women beckoning from its windows. It was too much. Many of the men finally broke ranks and ran inside it, able to resist no longer. Even Keth looked longingly at the house. It was covered in cloths of purple and red, and now many of the women issued from the house’s doorway, offering themselves to the outlaw army for their price.

  Benaiah shook his head violently, trying to clear it. The doorway of the house was dark and opened into more darkness. Benaiah could see torches inside, casting an orange and red glow across the walls and into the street. Music and pleasant fragrances poured from it, and he slapped his own face in despair.

  David shouted, but most of the men seemed to no longer hear him. Soldiers continued to break ranks and run into the house. Josheb, Eleazar, and Shammah tried to pull their troops back.

  Keth, Benaiah saw, was gazing intently at the house. He was muttering something. Benaiah strained to hear it over the noise. What was he saying? Keth repeated it again and again, louder, and finally Benaiah heard it.

  Just when the army seemed to be disintegrating and the officers could control it no longer, the noises and smells and clamoring music went dim, and Benaiah, startled, found himself lost in a sudden, strange haze. He did not know where it had come from, only that the glow of the torches went blurry, the music faded, and a woman was standing in the street directly in front of them.

  She was beautiful, beautiful far beyond what he thought a woman could be. Her dark hair and body were wrapped in deep green linen, and her eyes were as green as the stones found deep in the mountain caves. Standing before the army, in the middle of the throng and yet somehow separated from it, she held out her hands to them.

  Oddly, Benaiah felt no lust for her, no carnal desire at all—he simply yearned to follow her. He felt cooler, as if a breath of desert wind had found its way into the street and refreshed his soul. He stood still, spellbound by the mysterious woman.

  The men who had not fled into the house stared at her as well. All of the noises continued, all of the revelry and worship to pagan gods went on, but it was as though it had fallen into another world, and the remnants of David’s army holding fast against the scarlet and purple house were standing in an oasis of goodness, clear and cool to the mind.

  The woman’s hands were outstretched. She beckoned them. Benaiah stepped forward again, suddenly desperate to follow her at all costs. All of the men seemed spellbound, watching her, the lady wrapped in the brightest green, and all of them knew, instinctively, that they should follow her. This woman was different from the revelers in the street; her beauty pure, her skin delicate, her attention desired.

  Follow me, and I will pour out my heart to you, and let my thoughts be made known to you.

  Benaiah knew that she had not spoken aloud, but he also knew that all of the men in the narrow street, straining against the pull of the crowd, had heard the same words he had. Tears glistened below the woman’s eyes of green fire. And she appeared to be staring directly at David, reaching for him, begging him to hear her.

  He did. He was transfixed. But he was also glancing back at the scarlet house, still near them in the night. David looked from one to the other, grimacing. Benaiah was about to run toward him to seize his tunic and prevent him from crumbling as well.

  Then David yelled his war cry and pushed them forward. Benaiah shouted as well, as did the Three, and Keth. They moved their men together, clapping them on the necks and crying out to them to follow the woman. She melted backward through the crowd. Agony filled Benaiah’s heart as she moved away, but she was not leaving them, only beckoning them to follow. They would have to fight, they would have to push hard through the dark of the night, but they would follow her, and she would not leave them.

  Above and beyond her, amid the hazy glow that had come over them, Benaiah saw another figure. It was a man, a warrior, judging by the great sword gripped firmly in his shadowy arm. He looked immense, but Benaiah could not tell if he was truly large or just looked that way in the darkness. The woman was trailing behind the warrior, facing Benaiah and his men, and the warrior was moving through the crowd ahead of her, clearing a route through the awful noise and heathen worship.

  And David’s army followed them.

  It was not long before they exited the city through the gate on the far side. Cold wind struck them hard in the face, and Benaiah sucked it into his lungs. It cleared his mind like a swim in the icy waters of the spring melt. He forced his feet forward, exhausted from the long day of the march and weak from his unhealed wounds. But the cold felt so good, so much purer than the heat of the city he had just left. Other men shuddered and pulled cloaks back on to ward off the night air, but Benaiah let it cover him in its cold embrace.

  Light from the moon covered the landscape all around him. He opened his eyes again to search for the woman and the warrior who led her, but they were gone.

  Men began to stream back to the camp hours later, the ones who had followed the prostitutes in the city. Their commanders lashed out at them. They would be punished in the morning. Most staggered drunkenly, some tripping and falling into the waste ditch, to snickers of laughter from others.

  He and Keth watched their line, unable to sleep. Each had offered the other the chance to rest and the other had refused. Now they waited. A figure approached from the position next to them. It was David, who knelt down and placed his hands on their backs.

  “Why are you both out here? Commanders and officers usually stay in the center.”

  “We like being among the men,” Benaiah replied.

  David nodded. Noises of animals and insects from the night sang among the rocks and trees near the edge of the encampment. David listened to it with them, hearing the beauty as they did. Sound carried much better in cold night air. The three men sat in silence for a long time, not one of them wanting to ruin it with further speaking. No stresses and worries and fears; just the gentle sounds of the night.

  “Who do you suppose it was?” Benaiah asked softly.

  David looked up and down the lines of his men several times before responding.
“I suppose it was from Yahweh, though I have never seen the covering in that form.” He gazed thoughtfully across the plains, toward the distant tree line. The hills to their west gave off a gentle white glow from the bright stars.

  “We might have walked through during the day,” Benaiah said.

  “It is sin to lie with a woman during war. I was testing them.” David sighed. “My arrogance nearly cost us everything. I was not listening to the covering.”

  A thought occurred to Benaiah. “Can you to explain the covering to Keth? I tried, but …”

  David was quiet for a bit. His hand dropped to his side, where his sling hung from his belt. He fingered it before replying.

  “The day I used this against the giant, I knew clearly what to do. Their champion was blaspheming Yahweh, and Yahweh wanted it to end. That was Yahweh’s victory, not mine. When he speaks to me before battle, fire comes over me. A heat and a fire that pushes me forward and that I cannot control.”

  David paused a moment. Laughter and taunts rolled up from the camp. “In times of battle, he sends me the war covering. But the covering also comes when I am composing songs. A soft flame touches my throat and warms my soul. I call it the counsel covering. It gives me the music of the heavens. It tells me how to act, and what decisions to make that please the Lord. I wish I could explain it better. I often long for another person to speak about it with.

  “But there is more to it than that. When I am acting selfishly or out of vengeance, or I am running from him, the fire leaves me. I can still perform my duties just as any other man, but there is no fire in it. I become the same as a man who does not know the covering, and it is the loneliest feeling you can imagine. I miss that touch more than anything when it is gone. It fades away and my soul is empty without it.”

  Benaiah had asked the question for his own benefit as much as Keth’s. He let the silence return. He did not wish to annoy David, but he had so many questions. Heat. Fire. He had felt it briefly battling the Amalekites outside of the village, when the stranger had left him the spear. Was that the covering?