TWENTY-THREE

Benaiah watched the dust rising in front of him, disturbed by the feet of hundreds of men. There was no talking, no noise except the pounding of sandals on the ground. Not the usual laughter. Officers did not even shout orders. David had ordered silence and speed.

Benaiah was at the front of a column formation three men wide. There were twenty soldiers in the bodyguard, assembled in haste and told that they were to follow the chief wherever he went. Benaiah had had no time to organize them yet. Officers had recommended these men based on their service so far, but he would need to conduct a better investigation of each man when they were finished. A foreign king would pay handsomely for an assassination attempt from the inner circle.

David trotted next to him, eyes focused on the road ahead, the great sword strapped to his back. Benaiah watched it rise and fall with his stride, and the effect was calming. It distracted him from thinking about his wife’s hair, and how it was probably slipping out from under her shawl in the way he loved. And then the image distorted into smoke and darkness and terror, and rough men were grabbing her, tearing at her. He saw himself leaning against the blade, trying to kill himself. He would have done it, if not for Keth.

When David had spoken to them outside the house, the men had responded. Benaiah had never seen David so determined, and his determination had made the men eager to give chase. A few still whispered threats under their breath, so the Three were tasked with keeping an eye on them.

Outside the city, they had passed through a corridor of valleys that led to the south. There were occasional forests and hills, and they used these to screen their movement from spies. It was land they knew well, having passed through it many times en route to raids. The sun was directly overhead — noonday. There was more than enough light for an assault if they caught up with the Amalekites soon.

He flexed his arms to keep the blood steady. They traveled light, only a ration of water and a bag of food apiece. They would eat what they captured when they captured it.

Benaiah stepped closer to David. “Did those tracks farther back look fresh to you?”

David nodded without looking at him. “They did. They are lazy and sluggish, and they think all of us are still in the north. They have no reason to hurry. They might only be hours ahead.”

Benaiah glanced back over his bodyguard and was satisfied that no one had heard him. Too much information given too soon only spread rumors among the troops.

Their marching pace had gradually quickened over the day. His joints and muscles were still tired and painful from the ordeal of the week. His wounds from the lion’s claws ached, as if to remind him that they were still there, though it felt like three generations of his family had passed since his fight with the lion in the pit. The Amalekite raiding party he’d destroyed, the days of hard march, the destruction of his home—it was taking its toll, but he pushed it away. None of it mattered. There would be enough there when he needed it, just as there always was.

On his back Benaiah carried his rations and the spear from the strange warrior in the woods. He also carried his war club, the root of solid oak with an embedded stone in the top. It did not kill cleanly. He had chosen it for that reason.

The road followed a winding path through the lowland hills and eventually reached a gorge. Along the creek in the gorge, David ordered the men to fill their water bags and dip their heads. Benaiah sank his own face into the icy water, grateful for the shock, then shook his hair, slinging water over the men nearby. A few muttered at him. He saw that his men had broken into two squads, one staying with David as he paced among the soldiers, the other taking their water break. They would rotate positions. Good men. He had not even told them to do that. He nodded.

As the men lined the banks of the creek to drink, Benaiah heard the voice of a foreigner rise above the noise of the company.

“Is he insane?” the man grumbled. “We’ve been marching like this all day with no rest. Water or no water, I’m not going any further.” The rest of the man’s squad seconded him. Within moments, the growing chorus of discontent had spread along the creek bed next to the squad, until the entire company was complaining loudly that they could not go on.

At first, Benaiah could not comprehend how men whose families had been taken as slaves could say something like that. Then he realized that many of those complaining did not have families, and others had only recently joined their army. They were not in prime fighting condition; their feet had not yet developed the calloused soles that could tread upon rocks for weeks. They were the hired blades, and they cared only about loot.

Benaiah whistled for the leader of the bodyguard following David. The man came back, tunic dirty and scuffed from the days of marching, and nodded his head in respect.

“Tell the leaders that we have trouble,” Benaiah said quietly. The man nodded again, with a quick look at the complaining men around them, and walked toward the far side of the clearing at a measured pace to avoid raising suspicion. He pulled David and Josheb aside to give them the message.

Benaiah sighed and turned to the men along the stream near him. “Anyone who does not want to continue, raise his hand,” he said in a loud voice.

Dozens of arms rose. Benaiah was stunned at the number. Almost two hundred, easily.

“Why did you come in the first place, then?”

A soldier said, “We’re too tired, and the march from Aphek has ruined our feet.” He held up a foot, and Benaiah saw that it had indeed become a bloody stump of flesh pocked with blisters and splinters of wood and thorn. He softened a bit. A foot soldier without the use of his feet was worthless. The men without families would not feel compelled to suffer like this.

David walked up beside Benaiah. “What is it?”

“Our pace has been too fast for the new troops. Their feet are ruined. No condition to fight. Look at them.”

David perused the ranks. Some of them stared at him carefully, wary of seeing the sword unsheathed against them once more. Many eyes refused to meet his. He inspected them for a moment, then nodded. “All who wish may stay here. You are no use to me in the fight—you would probably only get more men killed. We will bring the families back.” There were sighs of relief from the ranks.

Joab stepped up, shock plain on his face. “Sir! You cannot let them —”

David raised a hand. “Contradict me again when I am giving orders, nephew, and you will pray for death. That is my vow.”

Joab was taken aback by the rebuke and did not respond. David’s face was murderous. Even Benaiah was startled.

Louder, to the group, David said, “Men with useless feet are equally useless in battle, brothers. Do not hold it against them, because your feet might suffer a similar fate before this march is over. It is Yahweh who will give us a victory today, so the size of our force will not matter. Does anyone know the story of Gideon the Judge?” Nods scattered across the group. “He winnowed out his force until there were only a few, and Yahweh crushed the Midianites before them like a man crushes a scorpion.”

David called for those who were continuing to reform their ranks. Daylight was limited, and they would need to reach the Amalekite encampment early to plan an assault. Refreshed by the water, men sprang up. Some even called out to their wounded fellows that all would be well.

Benaiah had to smile. Despite their near mutiny back in Ziklag and everything else that made them society’s reprobates, most were good troops.

They gathered and moved out, leaving a few officers behind to keep order until they returned. Four hundred of them crawled out of the ravine and kept pace with the jog David set at the front, following a trail of slightly trampled grass and dirt. Benaiah guessed that this path would eventually take them to the trade routes into the south and the lands of Egypt.

Besor Brook, the water flowing beside them in the ravine, would eventually cross the trade routes to the south as well. Whoever led the Amalekites was taking no precautions to cover his trail, apparently assuming no one would follow them. That lack of care led David to allow his men to run in the open, with the scouts ahead and in the forest keeping an eye out for enemy stragglers.

Someone shouted from a field to their left. Two men, road scouts who had been sent ahead to spy the route, were carrying between them a young boy, bedraggled, his head hanging and unmoving. His hair was trimmed short, and he wore only a wrapped cloth around his waist. David motioned them over.

“Sir, this boy was lying in a field along the road ahead. He is alive.”

They let him down next to the road and splashed water over his face. It revived him a bit, and he blinked a few times trying to focus on them. Benaiah recognized that he was an Egyptian.

They brought the boy some cakes of figs and clusters of raisins, and he ate them sloppily. David must have recognized his race as well because he began to question him in that language. “Whom do you belong to, and where did you come from?”

The boy, obviously scared, said nothing at first. When David knelt down next to him and repeated the question a little softer, he stared around the group and replied, and Benaiah translated.

“I am Egyptian. An Amalekite slave. I got sick, and my master left me behind three days ago. He was raiding the Kerethites in Judah’s lands. And we were in Caleb’s lands too, and we burned the Ziklag fortress of the Philistines.” When he said the last, some of the men who had been crowding around began to shout angrily, threatening to spear him.

David raised his arm to calm them. “Will you give me details about them?”

Even though the boy hadn’t understood the threats, he seemed to sense that he was in danger. “If you swear by your god that no one will hurt me. And do not give me back to my master.”

David nodded. “By Yahweh, God of Israel, no harm will come to you.”