EIGHT

There are flames. He is testing us, those of us who came to him in the cave. Only the strongest can join him. The ground is on fire all around me. He is testing us, testing us. But we can do this. Run faster now! The log on the rope swings again, almost hits me; I need to keep moving. Faster! he shouts, his sword cutting the ropes, sending more logs toward us. Will this never end? Will he never let us rest? But I will not quit. More logs swing toward us. I can do this. Keep moving, faster …

The javelin flies at me. Dive quick, roll, keep running. Too many things, so very tired. One more hill to climb. My legs are burning, they will not hold up. Breathe again. Wipe the dust. He is shouting at us again, I fall, more boulders coming down the hill. I can do it, I can do it, she needs me to do it …

David’s voice rings across the mountainside.

“You will be the greatest fighting force in the world, or you will be dead before the month is out. Either way, you will learn to move quickly.”

How do we survive this? Have not eaten in days, I need water, I need rest. Keep carrying this rock, Benaiah, do not quit, no matter what happens, do not quit!

“Praise to our God!” David shouts.

“Arrows to our enemies!” we shout back.

Keep running. I cannot run up another hill. Sherizah, forgive me, I tried for a better life for us. But I cannot run up this hill. I fall forward; my face scrapes the dirt. That is all I have. No more. The others collapse next to me. They are finished as well. David wanted one more hill. We cannot give it. But keep moving, he said. I can keep moving. I will roll if I need to. I will not quit! Keep moving! Crawling over the stones and the heat, I am so thirsty, I need water. Rolling now. Blackness, cannot see anymore, need water, I cannot do it, but I do it anyway, I keep moving.

I feel a hand on my back. “Well done, man from the south,” says the voice of David. “You have a home among us, if you wish.” He is smiling at me. So are his men. We can join them. A new life for us. A new start …

“Well, it looks like Benaiah, son of the priest, valiant man from Kabzeel, has once again fallen prey to his weaknesses. Probably has some excuse like his back gave out. Your father was a tough man. What happened with you?”

“No, it’ll be better than that. His eye hurts. Or maybe the child he was fighting stuck him in the leg, and he needs it to be kissed.”

Benaiah felt his head clearing in the cool evening air. Had he passed out? He became aware of dirt on his face. No, it wasn’t dirt; it was sand. No, dirt. Then the pain closed in with pressure behind his eyes, and he felt queasy.

“Don’t worry, we’re going to get the physician for you. He’ll be here in a minute. Don’t know if he’ll kiss it, though. You need me to kiss it and make it better? Bet I kiss better than your woman does.”

“That cut on his arm needs a better kiss than you can provide.”

“Bring your woman over here and I’ll show you.”

The voices sounded familiar. His eyes were not working yet; was it because of the blood loss? He rubbed them with the arm that still worked. The other one wasn’t doing anything he wanted it to. And why weren’t his eyes working? There was laughter. Yes, he knew those voices. They were standing next to his head, and a few of them had their hands on his back.

Finally his eyes opened, and he saw a large, husky face staring at him. Next to that face were others. The Three.

“Well, they’re open now, so I guess that rules out the bad eye. Any other excuses, Benaiah?”

He saw the curl in Josheb’s mouth as he said it. Always joking. Benaiah coughed out the dirt in the back of his throat and narrowed his eyelids. “Lions will do that to a man.”

“Lions, is it? And when did the bear attack?” This was Eleazar, running his fingers through his beard.

“No, the bears went down first. Twenty of them. Followed by twelve prides of lions. I let them have at one of my arms so it would be more of a challenge.”

“Just one arm? Thought you were more man than that. My infant daughter would have given up at least a leg,” said Eleazar.

“Well, that will spare her from being chosen for marriage. At least there will be a reason other than her face,” Benaiah replied. Everyone laughed loudly.

Josheb prodded Benaiah’s forehead, making him wince. “You never had a beautiful face to begin with, but you look awful now. Like you slept on a pile of arrowheads.”

Benaiah forced himself to sit up. The men cleared away from him to give him room. There were a lot of them around. Josheb shouted for the group to return to their meal since there was nothing more to see. Benaiah felt relieved that he would not have to tell his story to a crowd. They meant well, but he was tired. And in pain.

He pressed his arm with his hand, hoping to relieve the pressure from the wound, which was surely infected by then. There was a physician on the way. He hoped it wasn’t a Philistine. Then he remembered that David had brought a physician along with them, another man who had deserted Saul’s army. He was a battlefield physician, accustomed to cuts and heavy bleeding. That was good. There would be a lot of that soon.

Josheb finished shoving men out of the area and returned to kneeling down beside Benaiah. He was an averaged-sized man, smaller than Benaiah, and it would be hard for anyone to pick him out of a crowd of soldiers. Nothing about his physical appearance, including the constant twinkle in his eyes as he prepared his next round of teasing and joking, would convince anyone that he was probably the most lethal warrior in the kingdom. His body was not large, but it was hard, and he could move it quickly. Josheb was wearing a dark war tunic with elaborate stitching, which, to his lasting ridicule by the men, his wife asked him to promise to wear.

“We were a little worried about you. Thought you would catch up to us in Gath. By the time we reached Ekron, we figured you were hurt, but after all, we couldn’t abandon our Philistine sisters— sorry, brothers.”

Benaiah took the water offered to him and poured it over his face. The cold splash felt like new life. “As long as you didn’t weep for me.”

“So it was a lion after all? I am glad Yahweh spared you, my friend,” Shammah said as he leaned against a small tree. Shammah was the dourest of the group. His inability to make a humorous remark frequently left him out of conversations. Benaiah was a kindred spirit, but even he realized that a man rarely enjoyed life in an army if he could not come up with the occasional witty comment. Where Josheb was physically unimpressive, Shammah was immense, even larger than Benaiah. He walked awkwardly, and his social interactions were even more so. He muttered to himself when he was alone, saying he was praying. He would have easily been mistaken for a large, bumbling oaf were he not able to fight ten men at once with such control that he would scarcely be panting when all lay dead around him.

“Two of them,” Benaiah said. “Had some help from the village. A brave man named Jairas; a kid was with him. The boy girded his loins, though. He took a charge and was wounded pretty badly.”

“Did he make it?” asked Shammah.

Benaiah nodded and took another drink of the water. “He did. He was pretty sad that he didn’t have a woman to look after him, though. He told us so. Said he was trying. Made me think of Shammah.”

Josheb laughed. “That definitely puts him in the same camp as Shammah. How long have you been trying, Shammah?”

Shammah scowled. He fidgeted with a stick on the ground. “A long time. It fails to be funny.” There was more laughter. “No, I said it fails to be funny.”

“Why wasn’t the last one acceptable? I heard she came from good stock. Her father had more than enough for the bride price. She even had good, wide hips for childbirth.”

Eleazar, the third man in the group and usually the one who held his tongue until it was most appropriately used, had hung out ripe bait and everyone knew it. They all waited to see who would bite.

Josheb could not help himself. “Width was the least of her worries.”

Shammah punched him. It was a stiff blow, but Josheb was laughing so hard that he did not even mind the blood on his lip.

“I told you, I will marry when it comes time. The Law forbids a man to marry unless he can stay a year with the woman.”

“May the Lord spare me from such a fate,” said Josheb. “A year with a woman. I would rather wash Philistine feet. My wife kicked me out after one day. David has two of them. Perhaps he needs our prayers.”

“It isn’t all that bad. Some are worth it,” replied Eleazar.

“That’s because yours is good and submissive. What do you do if they behave like unruly mules? I’d never want to face my own wife in a fight.”

“Saul must have conscripted even more of the men because there were hardly any left in that town.” Benaiah had a way of interrupting the fun, much like Shammah, and he knew it, but his mind had begun to wander again. The other three looked at him expectantly for a moment, then realized he was not being humorous. They all stared back into the fire.

“They say he is already in the valley. Has camps stationed near the Gilboa range,” said Josheb.

“Makes sense. We always fortified the valley before campaigns,” answered Eleazar.

Josheb frowned. “But David was always the one holding the pass. No one got through the Jezreel if he was there. He was the only one capable of it. Who do they have who can do that now? Abner? He doesn’t have enough men.”

“Jonathan,” Benaiah said.

“But he won’t leave the king.”

“They might all be there. Even Saul.”

Eleazar bit into a raisin cake that was apparently so hard that he shouted and spat.

Josheb threw a rock at him. “Here, eat that. Better than my wife’s cooking.”

A man walked up to them carrying a satchel, and Benaiah held up his arm. The physician unwrapped the cloth from around the wounds, saw the oozing pus, and sat back on his heels.

“How long ago did this happen? And what did it?” he asked.

All of the men pretended to ignore him. Physicians were never popular in the army, or in the rest of the tribes for that matter, since many saw it as a lack of faith in Yahweh to have their illnesses tended. Fighting men just saw it as weakness.

“Six days and a foul beast. Sounds a lot like Shammah’s week with a woman.” Josheb ducked the blow this time.

Benaiah winced as the physician began to massage the wounds with a pasty ointment. It burned. A few moments passed with the physician probing the wounds and testing his reflexes.

“Did a physician treat it before?” he asked. Benaiah nodded, embarrassed to admit it. Josheb smirked at him.

“Good,” the physician said. “There is infection, but if you lie still for a day or so, you should be ready. It will hurt, though. Hurt so badly you will want to die. Fool thing to do, chasing beasts.”

“Your speeches would inspire armies to victory,” Eleazar said to the man.

A new voice cut in. “At least we would not have to listen to the endless whining of all of you.” A new form had arrived next to the fire; a man with a loosely wrapped gray cloak. He took a seat next to Benaiah and gave him a glance.

“Word has it you attacked several lions by yourself. Did you even think about the rest of us? We need men right now.” The man turned his eyes to the fire again. Benaiah felt something in his chest flip. Steady it. Not now.

“I thought the children of priests were smart,” the man said, the hint of a smile on his lips.

“Usually they are, but with our friend Benaiah, something went wrong somewhere,” said Josheb, quick to speak before Benaiah could.

The physician wrapped the wounds on Benaiah’s arms and head. It really did hurt. He could not let these men see it, though.

The man continued. “David has been called to the tent of King Achish. We should hear something soon. Keep yourselves ready for my orders.”

He waited for a response, then rose and departed into the evening toward another campfire nearby.

“He’s a brave fighter on his own. Doesn’t need to prove anything. No one thinks less of him just because he is David’s nephew,” Benaiah said as he watched him leave.

“Joab hates losing control. He didn’t like that David sent you instead of him. Thought he should have been the one,” Shammah said, gnawing on a chunk of roasted goat dipped into a pouch full of olive oil—made for him, as Josheb had loudly and mockingly pointed out earlier, by his mother.

“If he had, he would be half digested in that lion’s belly right now. Can’t say I would miss him,” said Josheb.

Benaiah let it go. He would be annoyed with Joab later; he was too tired now. It was evening still, so he must not have been out for long. The camp was beside the trade route known as the Way of the Sea, near the base of a mountain range crowned by towering Mount Carmel on the far northern edge of Philistine lands. It was a day’s walk around the base of the mountain into the wide mouth of the Jezreel Valley. The other route into the Jezreel, and the one he suspected they would take, was through the pass by Megiddo to Shunem, only a few hours on the march. However the Philistine army chose to close in, it would be a dangerous breach into Israelite country. Benaiah heard a stream nearby. He could see the flicker of torches and watchtower fires of the town of Aphek in the distance.

Something nagged at Benaiah, something hidden in the back of his mind. Something that he should have been telling the Three. What was it? He felt like his mind was full of mud, his thoughts sluggish and inconsistent. The fever made him sweat. He remembered the lion, and the village with the shepherd and the dirty sheep. Other strange images surfaced: darkness and fire, and figures roaming the deep woods. None of it made sense to his exhausted mind, but it felt urgent.

“How has it been here with the Philistines?” he asked, trying to find something to focus on.

“Lovely,” said Josheb. “We get to walk behind them on the roads and inhale the dung from their pack donkeys and chariot horses. We get to camp along the bottom end of the stream so that all of their filth and waste floats past us, ruining our water. They even go out of their way to urinate in the water next to us while we’re filling up skins. Great bonding and camaraderie taking place.”

“Makes you wonder why we’re marching with them,” Eleazar said.

“David has a plan. He always does,” Shammah said.

“He needs to tell us that plan, then. It’s unfortunate enough to lose men from the northern tribes, but I’m not going to spear a fellow man of Judah,” said Josheb.

“Yahweh’s army has men from all of the tribes. Yahweh loves all of his people the same. They don’t deserve slaughter at the hands of uncircumcised Philistine sea-filth,” said Shammah.

“The Philistines can have the northern tribes,” replied Eleazar. He was the smallest of all of them, but the quickest on his feet, and his skill with small weapons was unequaled. He was a restless man, always wanting to move and take action, intolerant of the long hours of mindless speech-making that characterized war councils. Josheb joked that if David ordered Eleazar to attack Gath alone with a rock, he would do it just to avoid sitting still in a war council.

Benaiah sighed. Politics got them nowhere. If it had not been solved in centuries, they were not going to solve it tonight.

Josheb, always the peacemaker, changed the subject. “Speaking of the tribes, you arrived at an interesting time, my friend. We have more men coming from all over the land. Many have bows and slings, good scrapping fighters. There are even Benjamites.”

Benaiah actually turned his head toward Eleazar in surprise. “Saul’s tribe? They left him?”

“Yes. Good men, too. Said they were tired of how they were being treated, heard a man could make a lot of money out here with us.”

“Don’t forget the Gadites,” Eleazar said. “We gave them shields and spears when they requested them, and they know what they are doing. They even crossed the Jordan. Two weeks ago.”

“Impossible,” said Benaiah. “The Jordan is over its banks now.”

“You haven’t met these men yet. You’ll believe it about them. They look like the lions you just got done fighting.”

“What about the men from Manasseh who left Saul?” Benaiah asked.

“Philistines wouldn’t let them come,” said Josheb. “Thought they would have a change of heart and betray them in the fight because it’s close to their own land. David sent them back to wait for us outside of Gath. It’s a wonder we’re even here. I have no idea how David does it. He kills their best fighter and slaughters them by the thousand as a youth, and yet one of their kings trusts him enough to lead us to war with them. I wouldn’t trust us if I was a Philistine. There are a lot of suspicious characters in this camp. Shammah most of all.”

“The point is,” Eleazar said to Benaiah, “there are a lot more men here than before. Even some foreigners. You speak some of their languages, so I think David has his eye on you as their commander.”

Benaiah nodded. He was fading. His head swam with confusion and pain, but he tried to hide it. “I figured that would find me one day. Seems a little odd, though, that David trusts foreigners so much.” Even to himself, Benaiah’s voice sounded increasingly weak. “I thought the whole purpose of this was to get rid of them.”

“Only in our land,” Josheb said. “Beyond our borders he wants to make alliances. At least, alliances with those not named ‘Amalekite’ or ‘Moabite.’”

“Yahweh wanted Israel to purge the land of pagans. But Saul never did it. David will. David reads the Law,” said Shammah through another mouthful of roasted goat. Shammah ate all day and read the Law all night. Benaiah wondered when he would pull out one of his beloved raisin cakes, also made by his mother. Likely not until Josheb was gone.

“As long as that purging includes acquiring gold, then I’m happy,” said Josheb.

Benaiah felt himself being lulled by the conversation around him. Jokes, serious talk, then jokes again. Then there was silence, each man left to his own brooding.

The breeze felt good on his head. The bandages were wrapped tightly, but the physician had left enough gaps to let the dry air in. Night had come quietly while they’d spoken. The sky looked clearer than ever tonight, with not even wisps of cloud to ruin the display.

It was their way of handling the pressure, the laughter. Josheb knew it. That was why he was the one they admired most. He was the funniest man in the army. He was also the deadliest. His spear had brought death to many desert bandits.

Although his thoughts were vague and foggy, Benaiah knew that, for all the Israelites in David’s band, the pressure they were feeling came from the same thing: they were marching with heathen Philistines against Israel, Yahweh’s chosen people. Something about it was so inherently wrong that surely Yahweh would send lightning to split open the earth to swallow them.

It was getting cold again. The fire crackled, and Eleazar stoked it. Benaiah loved the campfires at night on campaign. He loved the jokes. Loved the way a man could forget things and rest. The way he could bury heartache in the ash and coals.

His eyes drifted away from the flames, and he stared at the smoke rising to the stars, so bright tonight. He thought that perhaps the rain and snow had finally left for the season. It had surely surprised the armies. Kings went to war when they thought the bad weather had passed.

Sounds of men laughing were everywhere across the camp. A man at a fire behind them was telling another lewd story, to applause and laughter every few moments. Laughter could be counted on. No matter how many men may have died that day, there would always be laughter. Josheb would always find it for them.

A voice broke through the darkness at the edge of the firelight.

“He wants a meeting with us in the morning. Pack your things tonight. We will be leaving.” It was Joab.

“Leaving? Where?” asked Josheb.

“Our alliance is over. He will explain it more tomorrow. Tell your men that we move before daybreak.”

The young man disappeared again with a flippant wave of his hand. Benaiah despised his arrogance.

Then, suddenly, it all crashed back into his memory. The lion, the pit, the warriors battling one another in the snow … and the Amalekites. How had he forgotten? His face flushed with blood and shame at his delay. Had the lion’s claws raked his mind out?

“Amalekites are raiding in the hill country!” he all but shouted. “I killed nine of them, but one got away. There is a larger force somewhere.” The heads of the Three snapped toward him.

“Amalekites? How? They couldn’t possibly be ready for a campaign,” Josheb said as he stood.

“Might be mercenaries. They never stopped raiding the trade routes,” Benaiah replied. “They might be near Ziklag.”

The group went silent. Amalekites. Their families. It sank in deeply.

“There’s nothing we can do until morning.” Josheb began to walk out into the darkness for his turn to inspect the night watch. “Give your report to David in the morning. And try not to let the spiders and scorpions scare you, son of Jehoiada. I won’t hold you if you are afraid.”

The others dispersed from the fire as well, leaving Benaiah alone. He was angry at himself and his foggy mind that had forgotten about the threat in the south. He rose and set about finding a tent of his own. Perhaps the foreigners would become his company after all. Where were they from?

Sleep first.