TWENTY-TWO

Eliam felt a buzzing, as though millions of insects were crawling through his ears and out of his eyes. He realized that it was dark and sluggishly tried to sit up. The swimming in his head continued. Cool night air circulated around his face and revived him a bit, so he managed to clear enough fog away in his mind to recover his bearings.

He cried out as his foot burst with pain, rudely reminding him of the wound. The iron arrowhead had taken a bit of leather from the sandal strap into his flesh with it, and it had already started to fester. Yellow pus leaked around the jagged edges of the wound. It smelled foul.

It took him awhile to remember what he was doing and where he was. There had been a battle, and running, and water. It came together slowly. He remembered making it to the forest and climbing over the pass, but beyond that he could remember nothing else. He had obviously passed out between two boulders but did not know where exactly he was. Crickets and other night insects chirped all around him. A bug crawled out of his hair and down the back of his neck, and he smacked his hand on it sloppily. Then he remembered escaping.

Shame washed over him. He had run away from the field when they needed him the most. Like a baby. Eliam groaned aloud, causing the crickets around him to cease, leaving him alone in the depressing silence. He could not even think of what his father would say.

It had been going so well. He had faced the enemy, done his duty, hauled the water, and never stopped, even when the arrow hit him. Then he had run away without reason. Men were dying bravely, and he was running up the mountain away from them. There was no excuse. He had run like a coward because he was a coward.

He desperately wanted to know what had happened in the fight. Had anyone survived? He gathered his strength and forced himself to his feet.

No water.

He had forgotten water. He had run from the field and not even bothered to steal water. So he was cowardly and stupid.

Any day, his father would hear from someone that his son was a coward, and he would spend the rest of his life ashamed of his own son, a coward who wasn’t even smart enough to steal water as he fled like a woman.

Eliam considered killing himself. He would end it right then and die, alone and cowardly. He felt the arrow tip in his foot. Proof of what should have been his bravery, a proud wound to show his grandchildren one day. What happened? Where had his courage gone? He didn’t even have the courage to kill himself. Then came tears and sobs, and he let himself weep for several moments while he massaged the wounded foot.

After a while the crickets started chirping again. Despite the parching in his throat for water, he managed to start walking. There would be a village if he headed south. He would ask for a physician, and he would drink water, and he would hope that Yahweh would kill him as soon as possible.

Picking his way through the woods, Eliam looked for someone or something to blame for his cowardice. His father had been a brave man. So had his brothers. What had gone wrong with him?

He thought of Jonathan, charging so bravely and futilely into the Philistine ranks, desperate to show his soldiers one last display of courage before he died. Eliam was angry now. Angry at what? Who?

David.

He stopped walking.

David was responsible for this. He was the one who’d brought so much suffering into the land. David was responsible for Jonathan’s death.

Eliam cursed. And then he knew what he would do.

The stars were brilliant that night—the most beautiful night in a long time. Despite the horrors of the day, a day of many sorrows that would haunt his thoughts as long as he lived, the night was a wondrous sight.

Gareb crouched on a boulder and watched the fires of the Philistine army in the valley below. He was perched high on one of the peaks of the Gilboa mountains, so high that the wind was constant even when it was calm elsewhere. He loved the high ground and had gone to it in his despair.

Even from high above, Gareb could hear the sounds of revelry and celebration from the Philistine camp. Their awful music wailed incessantly. He heard laughter and shouts and screaming women — women they must have captured before and brought along for the victory celebration. Which is well earned. We did not have a chance.

Throbbing pain from the slashes on his back made him wince. Philistine blades had reached him. He cursed himself. Never expose the back. There was no excuse, not even losing sight of Jonathan. Not even watching him fall.

He pulled his spear up from the ground and stared at the shaft, trying to make out the lettering in the vivid starlight: twenty. The number of men they had killed on that day so many years before at Michmash.

He watched the stars move over the valley of the Philistines, wondering how Yahweh could allow such depravity and idolatry in their land and yet still give them such a beautiful night. The wind carried with it the scent of cedar and terebinth. Many of the Israelite women had put sprigs of saffron in the men’s garments before they left to war, to inspire them and remind them of home. Lot of good it did them. Made their bodies smell good over the next few days while the Philistines let their flesh rot in the hot sun. Saffron and rotting flesh. What a smell that would be.

Gareb looked down the pass at the field of battle. He was too far to see the bodies in the darkness, but the patch of grass near the edge of the forest was plainly visible. He had watched the last of it take place in that patch of grass: Saul cornered by the archers, his armor bearer with him. It looked from a distance as if the king had impaled himself at the end. No glory to the enemy. Finally did something noble. Or perhaps he was too cowardly to take the blade while facing his enemy.

The Philistines would cut off Saul’s head and display it, along with those of his sons. Jonathan’s head would be a fine prize.

The thought disgusted him so much that he retched down the front of his clothing, the bile in his gut rising too fast to be stopped. He choked on it, smelled the sour scent of vomit and blood, and watched it stain dark against the wool. When his gut stopped heaving, he spat out the taste.

He did not look at the other side of the field, just behind where the Israelite lines had broken at last. The hope of Israel had died in that spot. Gareb had seen Jonathan fall, and he wanted never to see the spot again. Yahweh had willed it, and that was that. It had taken an entire company to bring the warrior down. They wouldn’t have been able to do it if I had been with him, he thought. He cursed the prince for ordering him away from his side, cursed his rotting flesh to Sheol and so be it. Above all, he cursed Jonathan’s foolishness for remaining loyal to his father when he could have seized the throne and restored order.

Gareb had followed Jonathan’s final orders; he had run from the field when the final line of Hebrew warriors broke, exactly as he’d been told to, and now he would live with that decision until Yahweh chose to kill him. He wanted that to happen before he had to drag himself into the camp of that cowardly man living among the Philistines. Perhaps he was cursed.

Never leave your master in the day of war. It was the armor bearer’s first rule, and he had broken it. Although Jonathan himself had ordered him away, Gareb’s heart was heavy with guilt. Many men had with honor died on the field. He should have been one of them, and now Yahweh was punishing him by making him go to David with all the other failures of Israel.

He threw down the spear and watched it clatter across the rocks. The army, what remained of it, would be leaderless. Philistia would subjugate the northern tribes, and eventually the southern tribes would fall in line. Most of the royal line was now dead. The only men worthy of inheriting the throne lay slaughtered in the fields below him. Unified Israel had lasted for the lifetime of only one king. It was an embarrassment to the world. The Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians—all of them would mock and scorn the pitiful band of tribesmen who had briefly tasted freedom after years of chaos.

Only he can stop this … Yahweh is with him.

Gareb shook his head to forget Jonathan’s words and drank in the windy night around him, enjoying the brilliance of the stars over his head for a while longer. He would grieve for the men tomorrow. There was no time for it now. He had to go find the man who brought this upon them all, and he would do it for Jonathan. He would hate it, but he would do it.

He crawled off the boulder and headed south.

Abner, Saul’s general, sat on the same ridge.

He fingered a deep cut on the side of his leg, felt the warm blood as it seeped through the wool bandage he had tied around it. The pain had stopped earlier, but the bleeding would not let up. Until it did, he was forced to sit against the tree and wait. He was good at waiting.

When the Philistine archers and charioteers from the valley had found the gentle, unguarded slope that allowed them to attack Israel’s army from behind, ending the battle, Abner had slipped away in the confusion. By the time he’d reached the hilltop the battle was over. His army was gone.

His relative Saul was no more. He would need to see to organizing the remnant of the army. When all the generals but himself were dead, he had left the field, as was customary, since it would be up to him to restore order. There were undoubtedly only a few hundred fighters left, but whatever was out there would gather, and he would find them.

Ish-bosheth, the remaining son of Saul, was weak and easily swayed. Abner knew he would need to stiffen him up for the throne. Philistia may have won the day, but the kingdom of Israel would remain as long as Abner had something to do with it.

Abner checked his bleeding again, and thought about David.

He had been there the day the young man killed the giant, had been present in the war councils during reports of his victories. He even respected him. He knew David would come for the throne at any time. That was why he had been serving the Philistines. He would be their vassal. Abner nodded. If he took the throne, David would make a worthy king. But the tribe of Saul, Abner’s own tribe of Benjamites, needed to retain the throne. As the smallest tribe, they had the best chance of unifying the people. David was a man of Judah, and Judah was too large and powerful. The northern tribes would never submit to David without another long and bloody civil war.

Abner was getting older. Intrigue and political maneuvering seemed inconsequential to him now. But he would do this final service. He would reorganize the army and retreat with it into the hill country, and once they were strong again, he would hit the invaders harder.

If the usurper from Judah interfered, he would hit him as well.