TWENTY-FOUR
Sherizah watched the debauchery in front of her without emotion. Men paraded around without clothes, pulling at the women among the captives. Men passed around wine, danced heathen dances around campfires, and played on their instruments songs that seemed to Sherizah to have no order or structure.
Benaiah was north, far away. She was the captive of the barbaric man in the tent now. And that hard man had been watching her. She knew that her time with him was coming. She was too weary and frightened to care. She thought about making a run for it, hoping to be brought down with a sword stroke. She might even welcome death.
Benaiah had grown cold to her. His words had been soft once, gentle, soothing her with love. Those words were gone now, as he was always gone. He’d wanted sons, and she had not been able to give them to him. She had given him daughters, but now their faces were lost to her, buried in a part of her mind that she no longer looked into. Their lives had been short, and she hoped that perhaps they had gone to Yahweh. She had long since understood that Benaiah found better company among the men than with her. Grief would be difficult for a man to understand.
She pushed the hair from her forehead. There was nothing to tie it back with, so it flew freely across her face in the slight breeze. There was noise in the tent, and a man emerged, pulling a woman out of the entrance. The woman clawed at the soldier pulling her by the hair and screamed. Dezir, the wife of one of David’s men.
Had she been violated? It did not look that way — yet. That had been the strange and nagging thought that followed her all the way from Ziklag. Not one person had been hurt among the Hebrews. No woman had yet been violated, no child harmed, no animals slaughtered. It was impossible to know the raiders’ intent.
A guard approached her, and Sherizah saw that it was her time. Before the guard could lay rough hands on her, she stood and walked inside.
The Amalekite chieftain was stuffing roasted pig and bread into his mouth. Next to him was the large man who had first been seen at the city. He was different than the rough Amalekites: his skin was bronze like a burnished shield and gleamed with oil. He wore paint on his eyes and face, and he was almost elegant-looking in his fine linen garments. Were it not for his tremendous size, the largest man she had ever seen, she would have thought him to be a musician or entertainer. He regarded her, as did the chieftain.
“You have a husband?” asked the chieftain. She was startled that the chieftain could speak her language and nodded a response.
“He is a warrior? David’s man?”
She nodded.
“They are in the north?”
She repeated her nod but did not look at them. Benaiah had told her long ago that if she was ever captured, to simply obey every thing they asked her to do. Just stay alive, he had told her. But for what? To live for what? He was gone anyway.
Another Amalekite walked in and tilted his head in respect to the chieftain. The two men chatted in the Amalekite tongue a moment, and she allowed herself a glance at the furnishings of the tent. It was sparse, except for a pile of cushions stolen from some Philistine city; she recognized the craftsmanship. A torch flickered in a bracket on the center post. Maps were scattered on a short table, and the two men were reclining on the floor against the brightly colored cushions. The chieftain reached up and tore at the meat every so often.
Pigs. Unclean animals.
Sherizah stood, arms crossed at the wrists in front of her, waiting for them to question her again. Her eyes flickered to the giant, then away when she saw that he was watching her. She had sensed him watching her since she entered the tent. He made her uneasy. She seemed to him someone who was to be feared more than any of the others.