by Cliff Graham
Ittai hated rumors, especially when they came from his commanders. The troops knew nothing; they were here because they were paid well and would be able to use that money on whores and wine when they returned home. Their loyalty to Philistine kings was bought.
They did, however, hate the Hebrews. They hated them as only men who had been instructed from an early age could hate. For generations, Ittai’s people had been told the stories of the filthy Hebrew tribes and their warlike god Yahweh who destroyed his enemies. There was a firm belief among many that this god was simply a magic trick. The Hebrews were known to have sorcerers, old men who carried staffs and wore tattered garments, wandering the countryside proclaiming curses and warnings. There were legends of great champions who ripped apart creatures with their bare hands and killed his countrymen by the thousand with devious tricks. Dagon, he knew, was a pure god, one who commanded strict obedience and was ruthless with his enemies, not content to let his deeds be done by old wizards.
Ittai had joined the Philistine forces when he came of age following his swim in the Great Sea. The swim was required of all youths who aspired to command troops one day. They were dropped far away from shore in the tossing, vicious waves of a storm and told not to come back to land until the sun rose and set a complete cycle.
He was only fifteen years old when he was tested, but he remembered it now as he watched the thunderheads over the western horizon gathering. The lightning had relentlessly shattered the air around him, causing his scalp to flood with heat as the storm gods threw their worst at him. He swallowed more of the grimy dark sea than he could fathom and wretched repeatedly, slipping beneath the surface countless times, only to sense Dagon and his scaly hide shoving him back to the surface. More than once Ittai was convinced that he saw the bearded face of the half-man, half-fish monster he worshiped staring at him from the deep.
The storm had calmed the following morning, but then the thirst came. Salt filled his eyelids and nostrils; his mouth burned with the desire to take deep gulps of the water all around him. But he remembered what his father had told him during preparations. The sea was foul — it was to be tamed, not drunk. “The body dies after drinking the sea!” his father had warned him the evening before.
Ittai had lasted all that day and into the evening, barely clinging to life. When the signal fires on the beach were lit that indicated it was all right to return to land, he lacked the simple strength to pull his body through the waves to land. After a few dizzy attempts at swimming, he rolled to his back and passed into oblivion.
There was the cold shadow of the sea, and he occasionally felt movement, and then arms were pulling on his hair and shoulders. A violent heave came from his gut as he wretched the last of the sea water and opened his eyes. There were blurry faces, shouts, the smell of blood. A goat had been brought to the beach and sacrificed in his honor. The more he came to, he recognized his mother and father in the crowd, and his brothers.
Of the twenty young men in his town selected for the swim, five had returned alive. Accomplishing this most sacred of feats gave him a profound sense of awe that Dagon had chosen him from beneath the waves, pushing him toward the surface whenever he was drowning, rescuing him to one day be a conqueror in his name.
Ittai was grateful for the chance to conquer in the name of his god. His father and mother were proud of him, were prouder still when he made the rank of chariot platoon commander much younger than most due to his extraordinary skill. He distinguished himself in action against the enemies from the north who would attempt to seize valuable crop and herding lands.
He ascended through the ranks fast. His heroism at the battle of the Brook of Egypt against the better-trained and better-equipped Egyptian charioteers and bowmen, with their devastatingly effective recurve bows, made him famous. When all others were running under the withering assault of the chariots, Ittai snuck behind the lines and captured the Egyptian commander’s chariot, then sawed through his throat and mounted the head on a pike, which he waved to his men to rally them. It had worked. The Egyptians retreated back across the brook. Ittai was given three days with the temple prostitutes for this feat. In the steam and mist of the lodges of Dagon’s temple at Gaza, he had been pleasured by these women, the snarling face of his god leering from the wall and commending him for his bravery.
His first battle with Israelites had come at the place called Gilboa. Despite his inbred dislike for the Hebrews and his tendency to ignore the more ludicrous superstitions of his people about the Hebrew god, he was wary. Word reached him that the defecting Hebrew warlord, David, would be joining them on the campaign, and Ittai was one of the most prominent of the voices calling for this madness to stop.
David and his mercenary army were highly feared by the veterans who had met them on past occasions. Ittai knew of a commander who had lost his entire company when David had butchered them and cut off their foreskins, an act that sent those brave warriors into the afterlife without the ability to seed women, a horrendous insult. If David were to turn against them in the fray, it would be disastrous.
In the end, David was sent away, and Ittai believed along with the rest of the assembled army that he would go back to being the private force of King Achish, gathering riches into the king’s storehouse for a commission.
Personal glory on the Gilboa slopes eluded Ittai, for at the time, he was a chariot commander, and chariots were quickly rendered useless on the steep slopes where the Hebrews gathered. He waited out the battle on the valley floor, watching the lines of his countrymen advance up the mountain until they finally chased the Israelites to the gentle slope that allowed the Philistine chariots to attack them. But Ittai’s chariot had broken an axle, and he had watched in humiliation as other commanders stole his glory.
The Hebrews had been crushed at Gilboa, their best commanders killed or frightened off, David banished to the southern wastelands, and the celebrations and sacrifices went on for days. Ittai took part in a sacrifice on the third day after the battle. Several priests from the temple of Dagon, wearing shimmering fishlike scales on their colorful robes and head wraps, had slit the throat of a young Hebrew girl over a rock. As she gagged, priests pried open her mouth and studied the signs. Blood drained out of her throat when she coughed. The priests took turns studying the pattern of the blood on her neck, arguing with each other about the meaning of the pattern. Ittai had watched the girl struggle weakly before her lifeless body was thrown to the waiting soldiers who lustfully tore into her.
Declaring the god’s favor, the priests gave their blessing for the invasion, and celebrations were delayed until the northern part of the Israelite kingdom had been captured. They went from village to village, enslaving and destroying, stealing everything valuable and burning the livestock and crops dear to the residents of the nearby towns. On the fifth day, the priests sacrificed another girl, but this time the omen frightened them, and they ordered an immediate withdrawal back to the plains. And so the army had left the mysterious mountains of the Hebrews, and Ittai’s first campaign against them drew to a close.
But Ittai never forgot what he had seen on that campaign. The Hebrews were proud, defiant, and would not submit to any foreign master without a vicious fight. Even with all of their army dead or missing, they believed they would eventually be saved. When salvation did not come, they met death stoically, even the children. It had bothered him. He had thought about it for months and then years afterward.
Ittai turned away from the Hebrew women and made his way back to his tent. He saw his armor bearer, a grizzled veteran who had been with him for years. Most armor bearers were younger, but Ittai loved the man’s companionship.
“Tell me, old man. Let me hear your thoughts.”
“May Ashtoreth hide her skirts from our kings.”
“That’s what I assumed you would say. But it doesn’t help me.”
“Chariots into the valleys. Ridiculous. You would think we’d learned nothing from previous invasions here. It’s a g
ood thing that the Hebrews are holed up with their king in Hebron.”
Ittai nodded, then looked back up the pass. “We’ll be at Jebus, cutting them off from their northern lands, before the end of the week.”
THIRTEEN
The walk from the royal residence to his home usually took Eleazar less than a Sabbath day’s walk–the distance a man could travel and not violate the Sabbath. He intended to use every moment along the way to think about what he had seen in the council chamber. Josheb had stood his ground, had told David what only he could tell him. So now the king knew what his men were thinking.
The old David would be horrified at this king. Yahweh, open his eyes. Do what it takes.
The heat was suffocating as Eleazar walked down the entrance steps of the spacious palace. He saw numerous courtiers and tribal leaders waiting in line to have an audience with their new ruler. They sat on cushions in the shade provided by servants holding broad, purple-dyed wool blankets on the ends of poles, an extravagance meant to impress upon visitors and emissaries that David was wealthy and powerful.
Along the courtyard wall, casually nibbling on dates and enjoying the stares they were getting from the men, were concubines from Ammon, sent as tribute to persuade the Hebrew Lion that it was not worth his time to attack their kingdom. Eleazar gave them one more glance, then shifted his gaze away.
A woman ran up to him with a roasted piece of lamb in one hand and her other palm open. It smelled wonderful, but he shook his head and pushed past her.
Councils of minor elders, those who had less influence than the men who had been in the chamber that morning, waited impatiently at the far end of the courtyard for word of decisions made within. They eyed him expectantly, and when he shook his head, they lost interest in him and concentrated on the entertainment provided for those waiting.
On this day it was a troop of acrobats, tossing one another high into the air and performing feats of swordsmanship.
“Three flips or four? Three flips or four?” a man was crying out to the crowd, waiting for them to shout their guesses. The crowd chanted four, and the acrobat launched into the air, performed four flips, then landed on his feet with a wave. A roar of approval rose up.
The displays reminded Eleazar of the courts of the Egyptians that Benaiah had once described and seemed dramatically out of place among the tribesmen with roots in shepherding and farming. Much had changed in recent years, though. He shook his head.
Turning left onto the main street, he looked at the quiet religious quarter of the city, where the Levites and the priests had established a formal system of sacrifices and observances according to the Law of Moses for the first time in centuries. As opposed to the public courtyard near the palace, the corridors were silent with contemplation. Scholars of the Law came from all parts of the land, from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, because David had offered them sanctuary. They spent all of their waking hours hunched over scrolls. The people had not been observant of the ways of Yahweh, and David was determined to change that.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread would be the first official nationwide observance of Yahweh’s ordinances in generations. It was set to begin on the fifteenth day of the following month of Nisan and was to remind the people how Yahweh had delivered them out of the pharaoh’s slave camps generations ago. The korban pesach lamb had been bought from the most expensive herd in the land and was being kept in a secret place to keep it from blemishes.
It was an ancient tradition, one that Eleazar’s heart yearned to see among his people again. Only pockets of tribal villages had celebrated it in the past centuries. Eleazar mused at how David could be so contradictory — adamantly demanding that the observances of Yahweh be restored while still allowing the pagans to pitch camps just outside his walls and their performers to soil his courts.
He passed the single soldier barracks after leaving the holy quarter. It was the part of the city where the regiments of the newly formed standing army lived. David had conscripted three corps of troops to rotate full-time duty as the main fighting force of Judah. After all the years of raiding, they finally had the wealth to pay for a standing force, and the men no longer had to serve only between the planting and harvesting seasons. This standing force and its steady wages were an immense boost to the trading and merchant activity in the city, and the city had flourished as a result.
There were five thousand of them living in the barracks quarter, sharing rooms and facilities, living, eating, sleeping, sparring, and laughing together, developing the camaraderie that would lead them to ever higher feats of bravery and courage as they fought for their fellow warriors. There would be a mass reorganization of the military now that David was the king of a united Israel, so the troops knew that soon everything would change. The soldiers were given leave to celebrate the coronation of the king and told to report back in two weeks. That had been a week ago.
He saw that some of the men who had remained were gathered around a private well in their courtyard, dug to keep them away from the women at the main city wells. Every precaution needed to be taken, especially with the unmarried troops. There had been numerous stonings following the discovery of a married woman and an unmarried soldier over the past year as discipline had begun to slacken. The war had officially ended only the week before, but the fighting had eased since that day at the pool of Gibeon. It was a day no one spoke of anymore, a day that had died and was buried under the sands of the harsh desert sun with all the rest of the Hebrew blood spilled by Hebrews.
Eleazar deliberately changed his thoughts and smiled to himself as Gareb came to mind. Gareb had arrived among them after the loss at Gilboa seven years before, coming as many did when he had nowhere else to go in the face of the Philistine threat. He had been the armor bearer of prince Jonathan once. Better days, Eleazar thought. Gareb was now the member of the Thirty in charge of discipline and order, and had endless headaches rounding up the troops who let their licentious nature get the best of them.
Which was odd, of course, as it was well known that a large number of women came to David’s bed on a regular basis. The old David would never have taken pleasures forbidden to his men. As their army had grown, it became necessary for the leaders to make periodic visits to the darkened corners of the city to pull out soldiers trapped within. It was Gareb’s grumbling and complaints that had caught the ear of Josheb, and it was agreed before council that Josheb would be the one to confront David about the problem. The army was lazy because its leader was lazy.
The troops sparred in the courtyard of the barracks so that the citizens of Hebron could watch them. They were trained by the Giborrim. Unmarried members of the Giborrim, including the mercenaries, were given their own barracks. Occasionally a member of the Thirty, the most elite unit of the Giborrim, would step in and challenge all comers, and the result, without fail, was a platoon of bruised and cut warriors and a laughing champion.
Josheb was a particular lover of this exercise. He had the record for the most appearances in the sparring arena. He would vary his method of challenging himself. Sometimes he arranged for one of his arms to be fastened to a smelting anvil as he fought, other times he was armed with only his fists while his dozens of attackers carried heavy weapons. The troops adored him even as they were pummeled, as they adored all of the famous Thirty and the Three who led them. Eleazar, Josheb, and Shammah cultivated the image of the Thirty very carefully. The people needed their heroes, needed the hope that valiant men gave an oppressed nation.
Eleazar came to the end of the barracks quarter and walked down the street where the married members of the Giborrim lived. In addition to the estates they had along the borderlands, which David had cleverly given them as both a reward for their service and as additional incentive to fight for him, many members of the Giborrim kept homes in the city of Hebron itself. Women liked to socialize, men loved competing for power and prestige in the royal court, and children loved the company of others their age to get into mischief wi
th.
None of the homes could be considered large; the dependence on few things of material value was ingrained into the culture of his people and in the fighting men in particular. But as Eleazar approached the dwellings where the Thirty lived, there was a noticeable growth in the size of the homes. This was largely due to the sizes of the families. The men frequently teased each other about, as Josheb put it, the “lack of warrior spirit in their loins” if they did not have at least six or seven children.
Competition was of the utmost importance to the Thirty. They had no equal when fighting, so they were forced to look inward. Every social gathering (and many of the ceremonies, when the priests were not watching) eventually became a wrestling contest or a foot race. Not even the older and supposedly more mature members of the Giborrim could resist the temptation of besting one of their fellow warriors. When it happened, wives would roll their eyes and call the children to watch, since the men had made it a standing order in their homes that boys should watch and learn from their fathers, and girls should learn to tolerate these displays.
Eleazar ascended the short hill where the homes of the Thirty perched near the walls of Hebron. It was just enough of a rise that he could see over the rooftops of all the buildings he had passed on his way from the palace.
He paused a moment to watch the city as it bustled. The unobstructed sun beat down witheringly on the sand of the street. He wiped sweat from his eyes, then glanced at a building standing near the end of the street, near his own home. It was David’s private residence, the one he’d ordered built so that he could escape the trappings of the royal house and live among his brother warriors whenever he sought solace in their company.