FIVE

Benaiah found himself walking through sunlit corridors splashed with brilliant, colorful artwork, enjoying the scent of the Nile delta flush with spring flooding. His feet were clean. They were always clean. There was always a basin nearby to wash them in or a brush to dust them with. The Egyptians were cleaner than his people, always bathing and rubbing on perfumes at the end of every day. The great river ambled in front of every home and provided water to all who longed for it in abundance.

He entered the pool at the base of the alabaster steps. Goldfish touched the surface of the water around his feet. He watched them swirl around lazily before letting the linen garment fall from his waist. He stretched his tired muscles, first in his legs and then in his arms, taking a moment to admire how taut they had become from the desert fighting.

He was making a great deal of money in these lands. More than enough to gather holdings in the prime country near the coast. Perhaps he would become a merchant one day. But there would be no sons to pass the business along to, not unless Sherizah provided them. Two daughters, that was all.

He lowered himself into the water … and then he was in the desert at the edge of the sea, the high peaks of savage lands standing like imposing sentinels along the shore. Not a blade of grass or growth of any kind, only the scorpions and the vipers. What did they eat? Where was life?

Before him stood a crowd that had come to watch. And they had brought their champion, a great giant, his eyes darker than night, his gaze indifferent, as though Benaiah was only another fly to swat. The daughter of Pharaoh was there, seated on a golden throne carried by Nubian slaves, and they were all watching him, this barbarian Hebrew from the north who was to battle their champion in the sand at the edge of the emerald water.

Benaiah shifted his weight, and the champion attacked suddenly, so enormous, as immense as the giants in Gath, his spear like an oak tree. They fought across the sand, into the ocean, the salt spray burning his lips and eyes, terrible harsh sunlight on every rock face. The giant was overwhelming him, and Benaiah sensed a great void behind, drawing him in, pulling him into darkness …

There was a dim glow through his eyelids. Pain hit him suddenly, causing him to cough and clench his eyes in startled awareness. He blinked them open and waited for the light to adjust in his sight.

He was in a small room with a rough-hewn table in one corner. He was lying on some sort of mat on the floor. He was not in Egypt. He was in a small village high in the mountains, and he had been nearly killed by a lion.

Groggy and feeling like he had drunk too much wine, he tried to gather his wits by surveying the room. He guessed this to be the main room of the house, eleven or twelve cubits wide, with thick walls of stone and rubble cemented with mud. Robes and belts hung from hooks protruding from the walls, and there was a single window high on one of them with reed lattice covering it.

The light streaming against Benaiah’s face was coming from the window, but the smell of food, which he was immediately intrigued by, was coming from the entrance, a large wooden door with a bolt. The door was slightly ajar, allowing the breeze to swirl across the first level of the home, covered in dust and pebbles tracked in by sandals. Benaiah was lying on the second level, two steps above the entrance.

The roof was carefully constructed of sycamore beams covered with brushwood bound together with mud. It was slightly green — moss from the continuous drip of spring rains. Seed sprouts from the mud were also blooming, contributing to the look of a forest floor above him.

Benaiah’s thoughts wandered to his father’s home in Kabzeel when he was a boy, fighting with his brothers about who could stay inside and scrub the ceiling and who had to work the plow. Their father wanted them to do more than sit and read, so he made sure that Benaiah and his brothers grew to manhood with calloused hands.

Benaiah felt close to his father, a man who seemed to have no vices and loved his family dearly. It was a legacy and a name to carry with honor. Benaiah simply did not want to become a priest himself. But at home, they’d studied the Law, spoken of politics, and worked their lands. He’d learned of the guilt offering assam and the sin offering hattah, made when a person upset Yahweh or deeply offended someone else. His father had taught him how someone could become ceremonially defiled and unclean, and how to be cleansed of such guilt.

So I am without excuse, he thought as he studied the ceiling.

A woman walked in carrying a ceramic pot. Seeing Benaiah awake, she startled, almost dropping it. She bowed her head curtly and continued to the rug spread out on the floor near him. Putting the pot down, she averted her eyes and hurried out the door. Wisps of steam rose from the pot.

The smell of the meat made his belly ache for food. There was a dull throb on his head and arm, but when he sat up too quickly, it flared up and he felt like he had thrown himself into the cooking fire.

“Careful, my friend, you aren’t well yet.”

Benaiah turned to see who was speaking. Jairas stooped over him, a smile showing through his thick black beard. A gray robe and girdle hung loosely from him, and a square of thin wool was wrapped around his head with several cords. He wiped his brow with a wet rag.

“You have been asleep for two days. Disease nearly killed you.”

Benaiah thought about this a moment, then became frustrated that his mind seemed to be working slow. Everything was a haze — his thoughts, his memories, the sights in the dwelling around him.

“Two days?”

“Yes, two days. My wife and I have been up with you. So have our children.”

Benaiah rubbed his slashed arm.

“You did not have to …”

Jairas made a dismissive gesture and dipped the rag in water.

“After what you did? We should be giving you the whole village and all of our daughters as a war prize.”

Benaiah looked at the other people who were suddenly in the room sitting on the floor next to him. Two girls and a boy, along with a woman he assumed was their mother, the one who had brought in the pot of food.

“You have a knack for living, my friend. First we lost you to the lion in the pit, then I thought the infection would take you. Yet here you are.” He touched a sensitive part of the scalp wound and Benaiah winced.

“I confess I believed the lion had you. But our physician is quite skilled. Irritating man, though, always whining. You must tell us about the lion when you can, or my son will drive you to the point of madness with his questions.”

Benaiah glanced at the boy sitting next to the bed, staring wide-eyed at him.

“The entire town knows about your fight with the Amalekites. They wish to show you their gratitude,” Jairas continued.

“What about the boy? Does he live?”

“Haratha lives. The physician, as I said, is very skilled.”

Then Benaiah remembered all of it. The storm, the lion, the warriors in the forest with blazing weapons … the man who had escaped, and the prisoner who had told him about the raiding party.

He grabbed hold of Jairas’s wrist. “I need to leave. I need to warn my men.”

Jairas looked puzzled. “Warn them of what? All but one of the Amalekites was killed.”

“Not them, the larger raiding force in the lowlands. The wounded man told me.”

“You would trust the word of an Amalekite?”

“Amalekites live in small settlements scattered across the desert. They seldom join together, and they certainly wouldn’t send one group of ten men alone into our territory. They must have been part of a larger force moving into Philistia.”

“But you only just awoke! Those wounds are far from healed. Too much movement and they’ll reopen. You’ll bleed out on the trail.”

“They will hold long enough for me to get back to my men.” Benaiah pushed himself upright, ignoring the burning on his head and shoulder. The wounds were painful but not threatening. He should be able to function now.

“At least stay for the afternoon meal.”

Benaiah looked at the eager faces of Jairas’s children and nodded. He rocked himself forward and slowly stood. The creaking in his stiff joints led him to stretch his arms over his head and move his fingers. He had on a fresh tunic, apparently donated by Jairas. In one corner of the room, his spear, his sword, and his tunic were hanging from wall pegs. His dagger was propped against his shield near a doorway that probably led to a bedroom. The blades were clean and gleaming. The men must have rubbed them with olive oil and wiped them with coarse wool for him.

Benaiah thanked Jairas once more, who waved it off and maintained that there was more he wished he could do. Benaiah had heard nothing from Jairas’s wife, busy preparing the meal. That did not surprise him. Women spoke only when they were directly addressed. But he was grateful for her care.

The three children stared openly at him, and he winked. The two girls giggled and the boy tried to suppress a smile. Their dark eyes were friendly and innocent. He glanced away. When they all finally gathered at the ceramic food pot in the middle of the dinner rug, Jairas spoke a blessing over the food and the man who had come to them. The meal, lentils and roasted goat, was a rare feast. Steaming loaves of bread were torn apart and used for dipping oil and scooping up the mix.

There was cinnamon-spiced water, cakes of fig and raisin, and most surprising of all, a small vat of honey to dip them in. He knew a simple family would never have been able to afford such a meal, so it must have been donated by the village at the request of the elders, as hospitality required.

Still, Benaiah could not help feeling guilty a much-needed goat had been slaughtered on his account. That did not stop him from ravenously eating his first true meal in days.

Throughout the meal, the children chattered excitedly back and forth about the killing of the lion, and Benaiah was forced to clarify. No, there had not been forty lions. No, the Amalekites had not had an army of witches he’d been forced to fight off.

When his belly was full, Benaiah gathered his equipment regretfully. Jairas’s wife was given permission to speak and gave him her own thanks, again avoiding his eyes as much as possible. He tousled the head of the boy, asked permission to kiss the girls on the head, then walked into the late afternoon sun with Jairas behind him.

A crowd had been standing near the entrance of the house throughout the meal. Now they shouted to the others on the street. Leather tanners and potters left their shops, carpenters put down their bow drills and mallets. Metalworkers told their apprentices that they could run outside, briefly, to see the great hero off. He nodded to the people and forced a smile.

The elders spoke a blessing over him. When it was finished, the crowd began to trudge back to their work, resigned to the start of another day.

“Are you sure you cannot wait?” Jairas said as he and Benaiah were left alone again. “Sabbath begins this evening. It will take several days to reach your friends anyway.”

Benaiah finished tying his shield to his back and adjusted the pouch full of cakes and nuts that had been given him for the journey.

“I’ve lost enough time.” And the Sabbath does not matter to me anymore, he thought.

The livestock in the residential stables were lowing, protesting the fact that their owners had forgotten to feed them in order to be around the fighter.

Jairas cleared his throat. “What is he like? Your leader. The Lion, as the children call him.”

Benaiah paused. “He sings a lot. He is also the most terrifying man on a battlefield I have ever seen.”

“What about his politics? I heard he was chosen to become king one day, that he was raising an army in the desert to overthrow Saul. We know he is a man of Judah, which is good, but we hear that he employs foreigners and even Philistines. That he actually serves the Philistine kings! He also puts heavy levies on the people who work his lands in the south.”

“That last is true. But he divides up the bounty from them and sends it to the tribes.”

Jairas raised an eyebrow. “We have never seen any of his help here.”

“I assume that nice new olive press was paid for by a donation, correct?”

Jairas nodded.

“And if I remember correctly, your lions are dead now,” Benaiah said. He exhaled heavily. With his wounds he was having a hard time leaning over to tie his sandal straps. “He knows the people are wary of him. That is why he sends us out to help them.”

Benaiah could sense the older man gazing at him as he worked. The outlaws were already legendary, as was their leader. David was famous everywhere men gathered because of his exploits in the king’s army.

After a while, Jairas sighed and sat down next to him. He rubbed his forehead, every bit the tired, aging man he looked. “I was still in Saul’s forces when he killed the champion of Gath called Goliath,” he said. “I was summoned with all of the other men to the Elah Valley. I will never forget what I saw that day. Only Yahweh gives men such ability. I want to know if he is still the same man. If he is, then we are with him. You can tell him that.”

Benaiah nodded. “He is that man.”

That this village supported David was good news. Benaiah and the rest of David’s forces had been spending a great deal of time trying to quietly convince the people that, despite how things looked, David was not a traitor serving the Philistines, that everything he was doing was for their ultimate good. “He sent me to help you because he loves his people,” Benaiah said. “All of the tribes. We are not traitors, but people will believe what they believe.”

“But it appears as though he is the vassal of Philistia. They are our blood enemy and the enemy of Yahweh. The tribes in the north will have a hard enough time accepting a man from Judah. Marching with Philistines does not help his case. What does he intend to do?”

Benaiah was in a hurry to leave but made sure to watch his tone in the presence of an elder. “He doesn’t reveal all of his plans to us. But on my father’s honor, and the honor of Israel, he is the best man and mightiest warrior I have seen. When we march with the Philistines, it is they who need to be careful.”

Benaiah thanked Jairas once more, then turned and began to walk down the road out of town. “Tell Haratha I hope he finds a woman,” he said over his shoulder.

The people called shouts of encouragement after him as he left, and he nodded to each in turn. From the edge of the forest, he waved a final time, then slipped into the trees.

The snow on the mountains above him was gone now, exposing the grass struggling to emerge with spring. The rolling terrain of the Judean high country all looked the same and made it difficult to navigate. He followed a path that was occasionally lost when the grass gave way to pebbles and dirt. Benaiah had to make careful note of the creek bed. Following the stream’s route to the Great Sea would eventually bring him out of the hills and into the area around Ziklag, his current home.

She would be there now, rising with the sun and meeting with the other women at the community well. They would carry on and chat, the other women unaware of what she carried in her heart. No one knew but the two of them; there were wounds better left buried.

Benaiah pushed the thought from his mind and concentrated on forming a plan. In his rush to get moving, he had not thought beyond leaving the village. His original instructions had been to meet the rest of the men in the Philistine capital city of Gath, where they would be passing through en route to the north. Benaiah had been delayed several days; it was possible that they had already made their way to Aphek in the north, nearly four days’ journey from where he was, even if he ran almost continuously. Benaiah kicked a rock in frustration. By the time he got there, they might already be in the fight.

He searched for an alternative. The Amalekites must have already been in the land for some time if they were sending out smaller parties like the one he had met. There was a chance they were moving toward Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod, all cities on the coast. Those Philistine cities were larger, much more of a prize to the barbarians from the south. David’s small town of Ziklag might be ignored if a more appealing option existed.

The Amalekite chieftain must have good spies if he knew that the entire Philistine army, summoned from every city, was moving toward Aphek. The Philistines hoped that would be their last campaign against the disorganized Israelites, enabling them finally to destroy Saul and subjugate the people who had conquered Canaanite land so many years before. It was an ambitious military campaign, but like any other it had its drawbacks: it left the entire southern portion of Philistia exposed. The Philistines had to be relying on the hope that their rivals in the south would be too war-weary to invade before they could return.

That left Benaiah only one option. As much as he wanted to rush immediately to Ziklag and protect his home, he did not know for sure that was where the Amalekites were going. It was possible they would simply raid the coastal cities. Benaiah had no love for the Philistines; the more of their cities that burned to the ground the better.

Hopefully the Amalekites would see the incredible opportunity given to them by the Philistine army’s foolishly mobilizing every soldier and abandoning their large cities to fate. And once Philistia had been sacked by Amalek, perhaps David could be persuaded to launch an open war with the Amalekites, something that would give Benaiah unending pleasure.

He would have to travel as fast as possible to reach the army. All he could do was warn David; the rest would be up to him. If he did not think it was necessary to speed back to Ziklag, then so be it.

Except for his injuries, Benaiah was in extraordinary physical condition. But he needed to stop for breath every hour. His head and shoulders burned as sweat seeped into the cuts. He sat when he became light-headed, annoyed at the effects of blood loss.

By the time evening fell, the stream he’d been following had merged with several other waterways from other valleys and become a river. The terrain had changed, telling him that the plains were not far. He made up his mind to be out of the hill country before dawn.

In the open fields of the coastal plain, he would be better able to take a more direct path to Aphek, bypassing the Philistine cities of Gath and Ekron where lone Israelites were harassed. David had been insistent that his men never travel alone through those cities.

Sitting around the campfires while on campaigns, David had confided in some of his select men bits of what he was planning. He had been anointed with oil as a boy, he told them, symbolizing that he was to become Yahweh’s chosen king. Samuel, the old prophet who had recently died and was buried in Ramah, had chosen him when he was a boy. Samuel told David that he would rule over Israel someday, and in the years since then, Saul had hunted him in every corner of the kingdom. David was looking ahead, trying to subdue the enemies he would face as the ruling king over Israel one day, and his wars in the south were part of that plan.

Benaiah was among those who argued that David should kill Saul and be done with it. David had had many chances to do so and had refused each time, claiming that Yahweh did not want him to. Benaiah had long since lost patience with that way of thinking. He knew about Yahweh, had studied him in his youth, but after that day years ago, he wanted nothing to do with him.

All through the night, Benaiah was grateful to be alone with his thoughts as he ran, crawled, leaped, and jogged along the rocks next to the river, which he had guessed by then was the Zephathah. It was the main source of runoff in the spring season from this part of the hill country, but it was still too early in the season for the river to be at full flow. Later, when the rains hit their peak, the route that Benaiah was now taking would be impassable.

His wounds were finally loosening up and caused him less pain as he ran. He pushed himself hard, faster as the hours went by. The cool night gave him energy, and by the time the sun peeked over the mountains behind him, he had broken into the foothills known as Shephelah.

The forest was now full of sycamore trees. The early morning sparkle was reflecting in the dew. Moisture from the sea always gathered on the ground overnight in this part of the land, forcing him to pause once to wring out the water from his sandal straps. He ran past fields of sheep, the shepherds giving him a curious glance as he passed them. The open areas provided a great deal of freedom in choosing his path, and by the time the sun rose in front of him, he had left the rolling forests of Shephelah and passed into the fertile farmland of the plain of Philistia.

Benaiah had been running almost a full day. His body demanded that he stop for rest, and he eased himself slowly to the ground against a sycamore. He closed his eyes. Birds chirped. He felt something crawl across his ankle but was too tired to swat it. Being alone in the woods reminded him of the two warriors he had encountered high in the pass. Or had they been spirits? So many strange things to consider. He could scarcely wait to ask David about them.

Gradually he realized that he was looking at chariot tracks in the soft earth nearby. A Philistine road. Centuries before, when the great warlord Joshua was leading the Israelites into the land, they had been forced to withdraw from the coastal plain. The Canaanite nations who had been there before Philistia had chariots and easily defeated any attempt at subduing them. But in the hill country of Judea, the Israelites were able to win many battles, since the chariots were rendered useless. There had been an uneasy coexistence since that time, with neither army able to fully overcome the other.

Benaiah rose slowly from his comfortable nook before his muscles stiffened. He started trotting again, keeping his focus away from his wounds and on the ground in front of him. He resisted the temptation to look toward the south in the direction of Ziklag. Her dark hair would be tied up under her shawl with a leather strap, but it was so thick that she would need to tie it again throughout the day. He loved her hair, loved the way it spilled uncontrollably out of its wrappings.

He let his mind stay on her for a while, on the years of their youth when they had found solitude and happiness on the banks of the river, in better days. He watched her as she went about her day by the river, bundling branches and gathering provisions for meals. She would visit her sister, chatting endlessly about the goings-on in the city as only women do.

They were very young when they were joined. They would go on long walks—ignoring the work of the lazy afternoons of summer— and swim in the waters of the river ambling toward the Great Sea.

The sun had risen high enough to allow him to strip away the rest of his clothing except the cloth wrapped around his waist. This was a great relief, since the wool of his clothing had been fastening itself to his wounds and reopening them continuously. The bundle on his back grew heavier, and he stopped again to tie it down correctly. If the balance of the equipment on his back was off, his joints and muscles would overcompensate, leaving him in crippling pain each morning. He conceded that he would need to rest after dark; despite his urgency, it would do no one any good if he wore himself out and died before reaching Aphek.

That night he slept under a cleft of rock in a field, after searching for any better shelter. There were few other people in that part of the plain because it became exceedingly marshy during the spring season and swarmed with bugs. Only lepers wandered this land, cast out and shunned by their tribes.

The fluke spring snowstorm in the hill country had caused a major washout of the rivers and streams, forcing the shepherds and cattle herders to move their animals to drier ground. It would be slow going, picking his way through the mud, but at least he didn’t have to worry about being bothered by anyone. He wasn’t concerned about defeating bandits in an open fight, but he could scarcely afford another injury before reaching his men.

In the morning, Benaiah tied his equipment on properly for the day’s journey and set off north, leaping from dry spot to dry spot as best he could, occasionally snagging his foot in a mud pit. Small streams of runoff crisscrossed his path, and he jumped over them frequently. He saw no one else the rest of the day, and by midafternoon, he found a path of dry ground that ran parallel to the foothills on his right side.

He ran past the Philistine city of Gath, following a path between the foothills to avoid the city where the giant Goliath had come from. He relished the irony of David wandering freely in their streets, deceiving their own king. Benaiah wondered how annoying it must be to the people to see the conqueror of their greatest champion coming and going through their gates as he pleased.

Benaiah remembered that there was some sort of pagan festival the Philistines were celebrating over the next few days. David’s men had been given strict orders not to go near there. Because of the prostitutes. Unclean.

He spent another night near the city of Gezer. Benaiah was making good time despite his injuries and detours to avoid populated areas. One more day of traveling and he would reach Aphek, where he would demand a full meal of roasted meat. Although Benaiah had the supplies sent with him by Jairas’s wife, he craved more nourishment.

The plains were getting drier the further north he traveled. He was now close enough to his own men that travel on the trade road was possible. He ran, desperation growing in his spirit as he thought about the helpless families in Ziklag.

Around noon he crossed paths with a caravan of merchants, who told him that the army had passed them, traveling north.

Benaiah was grateful to be arriving behind the army. David and his men marched at the rear of the Philistine ranks because many of the kings from Philistia did not trust them, believing that when they reached a narrow gorge David would order his men to turn and ambush them. It was David, after all, who had destroyed many thousands of their best soldiers when he served under Saul. King Achish was David’s only ally among the Philistines, and only because he thought David was destroying towns in Judah.

Marching at the rear of the column also meant that they were forced to inhale the dust and feces left by the war horses of the regiments. It was intended to humiliate David and his men.

As the last rays of daylight fell over the Great Sea to his left, Benaiah finally reached the plains surrounding the city of Aphek. Exhausted and in pain, his wounds leaking a yellow fluid, Benaiah stumbled toward the tents and campfires of the army. He made his way carefully around the outskirts, looking for the distinctive tents that the Philistines had given the Israelites while they stayed in their camp—simple coverings, much less elaborate than the Philistine battle tents.

At the southern edge of the encampment, he found them. He stumbled toward the nearest fire in the middle of them and collapsed next to a man sitting bare chested and eating bread, who called out for help. Benaiah heard voices, commotion, and then nothing more.