Thomas Brookside

THE LAST DAYS OF JERICHO

HISTORIC   Ω  CLASSICS

Copyright © Thomas Brookside 2010

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ONE

But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth;

But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee;

That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God.

–         Deuteronomy 20:16-18

…Blood ran on the stones, and soaked through the sand in the cracks between the stones; and still the horns blared on.  The fire consumed the olive wood, and the smoke bore its offering up into a sky streaked with white glare; and still the cymbals crashed.   I fell to my knees, and a yellow smear of vomit forced its way past my lips; and still the goat-bone flutes squealed.

We had done it.  Finally, we had done it…and still the blaring, formless music from outside the city walls went on.  It rang in my ears until I thought I would go mad.

I looked up, and saw that the melee had started again.  The people of the city, wailing with grief, had thrown themselves at the ring of soldiers surrounding the tophet once more.  Pointlessly.  The soldiers struck the women down with their clubs; the men they cleaved with their muib axes.  More agony ran down along the stones.  And for what?  The deed was done, and it was too late to stop it now.

“Sakal!” the Priest bellowed, stabbing a thin arm and a bony talon of a finger at me.  “Now you will see!”

The Singer clung to the Priest’s other arm desperately.  His emaciated frame was barely enough to support even her slight weight.  She stared wild-eyed first at the bronze sky, and then at the courtyard wall.  Gagging, near fainting, she struggled to fix her gaze anywhere but on what was directly in front of her.

Yes, I thought.  Now I will see.

“Now you will see!” he screamed again, not knowing that I had already agreed.  Even though it broke now in fear and rising panic, his voice still carried well.  I heard him clearly through the clangor that came from outside the walls, and through the weeping of those struck down in the courtyard between us.  “This sacrifice will call the Divine down to the deliverance of this city!”

Yes, I thought.  I imagine it will.

I got to my feet, and flailed my way through the crowd to the tall archway that led out of the courtyard.  When I reached the arch, the press of the crowd grew less, and I started to run.

Through the tangled streets and down the east stair, I ran; my feet slapping on the worn steps.  Through the Inner Gate House, I ran; not hearing any hails from the startled guardsmen.  Across the market square at the foot of the gate, I ran; kicking up dust into the faces of the poor exiles huddled there bleaching in the sun.  My heart pounded and my head spun as my breath grew short, but I was glad of it.  It helped me to keep my mind blank, and to forget what we had just done, for at least a little while.

I stopped at the well that was set in the middle of the square.  It was a dry well; the wells were all dry, now.  I clung to the low rim wall around the wellhead, and dug my fingers into the mortar that bound the small fieldstones.  I stared down into the dark opening in the body of the earth.

From far above me in the burning air came the great voice of the captain of the Inner Gate House.  He stood on the rampart and called out the news to the insensible and fly-covered wretches lying in the square.  “I have heard all the words which my lord, the Melek, has sent…” He roared to be heard over the din, which had not decreased or relented.  “At the feet of my lord seven times and seven times do I fall! Behold the deed, which my lord has done!  Let those who have leagued against us in hostility take heed!”

Words.  More words.  The Melek and his sycophants, who pass back and forth between fleeting words and bloody crimes, should pile their illusions into a cemetery pit and be gone.  The stones of our land will soon be above our heads like a sky, and their babble will continue even into that long night.

I hung my head over the rim of the well, and wondered if I should cast myself into it.

A reedy voice called to me from out of the rocky dark:

Not yet.

I laughed, madly and bitterly, in reply.

Unseen beyond the outer wall, the parade that was the source of our dread moved on.  It continued on its long circuit to serenade the watch on the rampart that faced the Mountain.  This, at least, made the noise where I was decrease.

As there was nothing else to hear but my own mad laughter, that was not much comfort.

I lifted my head from the pit, to see one of the exiles tottering across the square on unsteady and sore-covered legs.  When he drew near, he tried to speak.  His parched tongue made him unintelligible, but his gestures clearly begged some pittance from me.  I took the fillet from my head and handed it to him, gold circlet and all.  His joy and gratitude at my gift were touching; all the more so because he did not know they were absurd.

All at once, there was silence.

The tumult outside the walls ceased, choked off in an instant.  In the sudden void of sound, I imagined I could hear the cracked heat of the sun as it baked the ground.

There was an extended moment when all the world seemed to hesitate.

The harsh cries of birds then began to fill the air.  First a few, and then many.  Shading my eyes, I looked up to see a great flock of blue-green birds flying up from every street and alley.  They headed out over the wall and away at desperate speed, croaking out warnings to each other from their curved beaks.

The voice from the well whispered:

It’s time.

- And a new hammer blow of sound struck the city.  The discordant horns and instruments returned from their brief silence, amplified a hundred fold.  They were joined by the voices of thousands, united in a cry of hatred and triumph.  The sound was so great that it became like a fierce wind, strong enough to knock the beggar down and blow his new treasure out of his hand and away across the square.  He had enjoyed it for a time that was even briefer than I had supposed.

The earth itself then reared up beneath me, and the market square tipped over like a foundering raft.  The sun chased my feet and the well’s abyss chased the sky.  The bricks of the Inner Gate House crumbled into sand and slid into the square.

My son, I thought, and I was overcome by total blackness.  Oh, my son.

TWO

Mere phantoms, we go our way; mere vapor, our restless pursuits; we heap up stores without knowing for whom...

–         Psalms 39:7

Before the siege, before everything:

I led the caravan of the Melek on its return from Tur, and no shadow from the future encroached on any acre of my thought.  If led it can be called; for most of the distance I did nothing more than ride a spare ass at the rear of a long line.  The heavily laden beasts knew their business well and required little direction on the way.  We encountered no bandit, and saw no hill-spirit.   I was required to issue few commands beyond declaring our times of tearing out the tent pegs in the morning and of pounding them in the evening.

After crossing the coastal plain, we crawled along the valleys between sharp hills of naked rock.  It was the time of year when the rains have ended and the dry southeast wind that blows steadily off the desert of Paran covers the land with its dust, and the road burned my eyes for days.  The high heat of summer had not yet risen to its full anger, but the sun still cooked the sand to a crust at mid-day.  When we descended at last into our city’s deep valley and the leaves of the first sycamore of the oasis came into view, my sighs of relief mingled with the ululations of the caravan-men.

The green of the irrigated fields was like a cool drink for the mind, after so much rock.  Clear water in many canals flowed out from the main springs, between long lines of palms.  The fields watered by those canals alternated with fields left dust, and made a green and brown grid pattern in the land not unlike that of the cloth of my kilt.  Olive and almond trees, standing in their broad squares, waved a greeting to us in the light wind.

We crossed the valley’s bowl of checked green and passed under its palms.  The city rose before us on its steep round hill.  With its whitewashed brick houses, it glinted in the sun like the pale breast of the goddess who traverses the sea.

The barley harvest was under way, and some of the fields were already in stubble.  Men moved through the remainder of the crop swathing the grain stalks into windrows.  The wheat would not ripen for another month, and in its own separate fields it still waved full and bright green, marked with only a few flecks of gold.  The first pomegranates were in bloom, and covered in small red bell-flowers. If I were a poet, I would have spun some lines about the loveliness of the spring-blessed city of Yarich, and used them to gain the favor of the Melek, who was notoriously song-addled.  But I am not a poet.

The hillock on which the city perched reared up sharply over our heads as we approached the Outer Gate House.  Some say that the city's hill is the shadow of the moon god come to earth, to be a dais for his city.   But I have found that when a man digs down into the hill to build his house, he comes across the bricks of houses that can no longer be seen; I know that Yarich is not built on the shadow of the moon, but of the past.  The huge boulders of the wall that rings the base of the hill hold trapped the bones of houses and walls that are now gone.  The revetment wall of stone and the whitewashed mud-brick wall atop it rise straight up from those bones to the height of ten men, and the inner wall rises higher still.  Our city is a wonder, and the first crick-necked sight of it can daze or dizzy one who has never journeyed here before.

A smiling youth sitting on a boulder met the caravan just outside the walls, where the road passed by the shanties of the field hands and turned to rise to the Outer Gate House.

“Be careful riding into the city on that donkey…” he called to me when I drew close.  He jumped down from his boulder and shook his head at me.  “You might be mistaken for the Melek’s new concubine.”

He was thin where I was fat, and stood straight where I am stooped and hunched, but the cloth of his tunic was of the same pattern as that of my kilt.

“You are insolent, Bensakal,” I reproached him, but I smiled back despite myself.  “Get the men and beasts up to the storehouses.  I’m tired.”

“Complaints and demands?” he laughed.  “Forget being mistaken for a concubine.  You’ll be mistaken for the queen.”

This was not only insolent, but also impolitic.  I looked around quickly, to see if anyone had heard.  It was our good fortune that no one had.  Like his mother before him, my son loved his own wit, and in his eagerness to hear his own jokes he would at times lose track of what should not be said.

“All right, all right,” I humored him.  “I’ve ridden far enough.  I’ll walk into the city.”

He was right: many of the citizens would have accused me of putting on royal airs, or of a soft and womanish affectation, if they saw me riding rather than walking.  For my part I have never understood why anyone would walk when an alternative was available.  Reluctantly, I slid down from the donkey’s back.

The smile disappeared from Bensakal’s lips as he turned away from me and to the task I had given him.  He gave the caravan-men short and clear orders in a sharp, authoritative tone.  The smile that had left his lips flew to my own as I watched him.

I lingered before the walls for a while, pretending to take a drink from the spring there, after he got the men into order and went in through the gate.  I did not want him to think that I felt it necessary to keep him under my eye.  When I was sure that I would not catch up, I went in.

Inside the gates the houses of the lower city were packed together like a honeycomb.  Some even climbed up the side of the wall, to use every ell of our hill’s small space.  The lower city was the district of the poor, holders of sixth or seventh shares, and they crowded here between the houses and workshops.  Their children scurried everywhere, many of them naked and barefoot, or covered in some tattered and dun-colored rag at best.

The road narrowed down to a mere lane squeezed between the buildings.  It made its way along the base of the hill, with the wall always on its left and a steep slope to which more houses clung precariously on its right.  Occasionally an alley would open on the right, up which a stone stair would rise to provide access to structures higher up.

I turned into one of these alleys and made my way up the Seal Engravers’ Stair.  The air there was full of stone dust, the rhythmic hum of bow drills, and the scraping of files, but it was the most direct route to the upper city.

At the top of the stair, these sounds gave way to the shouts and calls of the market square.  The market was situated just outside of the Inner Gate House.  This location was convenient enough for the household heads who lived in the upper city to reach, but still remote enough to protect the upper city from the market’s noise and its occasional disturbances.  It was the largest open space on the crowded city hill; larger even than the public areas of the temple complex.

The square was always bustling and hectic, but even more so at harvest time. This was when the city’s tradesmen and farmers would meet to settle their private debts of the last year, and traders and goat-men would come to bargain with the household heads. I made my way through and by them, as they haggled, and scratched lines in the dust on the paving stones, and passed back and forth the clay figurines that bound each to deliver so many bushels, so many animals, so much beer.

I did not trouble myself with such matters.  As a hanikim retainer of the Melek, I ate from his kitchens and drew what I needed for my day-to-day affairs from the royal stores.  I did not seek to supplement the goods that were my due with private exchanges, as many of the other holders of first shares did.  Trade worries consumed my days, but it was the trade of kings and cities, and not that of fathers and fields.

In one corner of the square I saw an unusual sight: a small number of tents had been set up.  They were of the variety used by the tribesmen of the hills beyond the river, and the families of these foreigners milled about them aimlessly, taking no part in the day’s trade.  Ordinarily, no tent could be set up in the valuable and limited space devoted to the market.  Traders and tribesmen were required to encamp outside the city walls; after negotiating in the market, they would consummate their bargains and exchange their goods outside the walls as well.  I noted this oddity in passing, and shrugged.

I did not realize at the time that these few tents in the square were the first sign of the troubles that were to come down upon us.  I moved on, in happy ignorance, and walked into the tunnel-like darkness of the Inner Gate House.  I squinted my way past the four chambers of its guardsmen, and came out into the light again in the Palace District.

Or, at least, what we called the Palace District in deference to the sensitive pride of the Melek.  Generally, to have a palace district, a city must have a palace; and Yarich had none.  None that deserved the name.  It had a building where its ruler lived, but one could hardly call it a palace.  In great Hazor two small courtyards surrounded by small and airless rooms would barely be thought good enough for the wealthier traders, let alone for the king; but our lord was forced to make due with it.  The narrow confines of the upper city hemmed the Melek in and would not allow him to construct a palace that would match his vanity.  He did not dare encroach on the sacred precinct of the Temple or knock down any building belonging to a household head for space – he was powerful, but his power had limits, which he instinctively knew and did not test.  He knew it would take a terrible tyrant indeed to construct a true palace at Yarich, and he was not nearly terrible enough.

I bore it more easily than he did.  As I was his hanikim, and served him as my father had served his father, the modest pair of rooms I kept here were my home.  Returning to them stirred my heart, however mean the rich men of another city may have found them, and I would not have exchanged my place with any foreigner.

I returned to those rooms and settled the scant set of my things that had not been packed among the caravan baggage.  Few greeted me or noted my return; all of those who were not out in the fields managing the harvest were occupied with royal errands.  This was all well with me; I used the time to ease my mind off the road.  I washed my face and my feet.  I retrieved from my pack the potsherds with the scratched notes I had made to be sure that the storehouse stewards could not cheat either the Melek or me.  I sat for a while in a square of shade in the near courtyard and listened to the city noises fluttering overhead.

When the sun had passed below the line of the west wall and the entire courtyard was in shadow, one of the cooks’ boys came to summon me to the dining hall.

The hall was already crowded with strangers and their servants when I arrived.  I stepped down onto the sunken floor of the dark and smoky room.  At the luck-shrine by the bottom of the short stair, I stopped.  I wet my fingers with spring water from the basin, and sprinkled a few drops on the bronze calf of the god and his small ceramic house, while mumbling a few words wishing good fortune for the Melek and his wife.

Many guests had already taken their places on woven mats at the long three-legged table running down the center of the room.  A few of the household heads of the city and clan heads from the outer villages were there, as always; they were the noble bulls of the land, and it was ever politically necessary to show these men hospitality, both to flatter them and to bring them before the royal eye.  Other men who served the Melek in the city, as I did, were also present, along with some of those who stood in his chariots.

On this occasion there were others I did not recognize: Egyptians with shaved heads and painted faces, and a crude-looking chief of the Amuru with broad shoulders and dust-stained hands.  The chief was no doubt the master of the tents I had seen in the market.  The Egyptians might have been ambassadors, but they had more the look of priests about them; they sat close by our own chief Priest.

The Melek and his wife sat on their fine wooden stools at the head of the table.  The presence of the Egyptians had given them an excuse to dress in fine linen of the Nile and to wear the jewelry and cosmetics of that land; his fat and boyish face, and her sharp and birdlike one, were painted heavily in blue and black and red.  The sons and servants of those present sat on the floor and on the stone benches that ran along the outer wall of the hall.  Bensakal was in his own spot there; he had no doubt come directly from the storehouses after settling the goods and beasts of the caravan.  His face was impassive as was proper, but both laughter and a greeting were in his eyes.  For my part I had seen the Melek dressed in even more absurd costumes and had long since ceased finding them amusing.  I knelt to the master and mistress of the house, and took my place at the table.

The Melek raised a polished stone bowl from his lap, and the Priest rose from his place and poured into the bowl a mixture of water and the wine of the northerners.  After our lord drank, he spilled a libation on to the floor.  At that signal, servants hastened into the hall to serve the banquet.

“We welcome the Eldest of the Hall of the House of Amon,” the Melek declared from behind his wine bowl.  He could barely contain his pride at receiving his Egyptian visitors; you could almost fear that he would prostrate himself before them, as if they were Pharaoh himself.  The Great King’s merchants – and governors – were common enough in the cities of the south, but they rarely came here.  One of the Egyptians, presumably the head of the delegation, bowed his head slightly in reply.  Eldest of the Hall was the title of a temple functionary, so I had been right: priests.  This was worrisome to me; our own temple-minders were trouble enough.

“An honor indeed,” our Priest concurred.  He nibbled rapidly at a bit of bread smeared with chickpea paste, turning the bread around and around busily in the same nervous gesture he always used.  I had been watching him fuss with his food like an oversized rat since we were boys in the palace together and his name had simply been Shachath, without any title.  “Your lord gives life by his sweet breath, even as the sun, his gracious father.  What could mere men like us do for such a one?”

Shachath employed the correct formalities, but I thought I could detect a hint of irony in his speech.  He was less impressed by the foreigners than our lord was, and I had no doubt that his flattery was designed to pointedly remind the Egyptians that the arm of Pharaoh had not reached this far north in many decades.

“We come with the passport of Pharaoh,” the Eldest replied, using the language of the district so that all could understand.  “…But not at his command.  We are on the business of the god, whose image we have borne here.”  This was a clever response.  The arm of the Pharaoh, the Eldest was letting us know, might have grown short – but that of the god had not.  “We have heard that the heavens themselves have settled in the voice of the Singer of your city, and Amon summons her to his great temple.”

A murmuring rose from the benches at this.  I frowned and sucked in my breath.  Shachath, to his credit, gave no visible sign of a reaction at all.  I could see the rage that flared in him only because I knew his turns as one sheep of the flock knows the footsteps of the next.

The Melek, incredibly, laughed – directly in their faces.  There was nothing they could have requested, or demanded, that would have been more likely to produce such an insult in response.  He admired and envied and feared the Egyptians – but not that much.  “To call a Singer from the city is a weighty matter,” he said, when he had gotten hold of himself again.  “We will have to talk about this more, privately.”  If not preceded by laughter, this response could have meant: Perhaps, yes – depending on what you offer in return.  Preceded by laughter, it meant: You will grow old waiting for an audience with me to obtain your aim.

Another ruler in another city might have acceded to the request happily, and considered it both an honor and an opportunity to have a valuable favor credited to his account with a great power; the Melek saw it as nothing more than an attempt to steal from him.  They would have been better off asking him to sell them his wife.

“And we are honored by another guest,” he went on, more gravely.  “Abishar, who was prince in Gil’al, and who leads the remnant of her people.”

This was news to my ears, and explained both the presence of the chief – who bowed his large square head in gratitude for the recognition – and the tents in the marketplace.  Gil’al was the largest tribe of the Amuru east of the River.  Some tragedy had befallen that people, and it flattered the vanity of the Melek for Yarich to be seen to take in and succor a small group of surviving exiles.  No doubt he also intended the Egyptians to see his act as implying a wider influence over the hill district than we actually possessed.  Plans– there were always plans.

Abishar replied at length in his heavy accent, lamenting the fate of his people and continuing with an extended panegyric praising the generosity of our city and its ruling men.  After he had proceeded in this way for some time, the Melek gently cut him off by raising one hand.

“Do not let grief make your mind derelict,” he advised.  “You do not climb to the cemetery to see the sun.”

He continued to give such advice as the meal began.  He luxuriated in the presence of a dependent foreigner.  The presence of the Egyptians and the prince of Gil’al allowed him to play his favorite role: the great man of a cosmopolitan court.  Again, at the table of Hazor you would find men of Babylon, Qatna, Kapta – on a permanent basis, and not as occasional visitors.  I often wished that the Melek could love his fine city as it was, and not as it was put to him in the poetry of flatterers.

I was curious about the story of the fall of the men of Gil’al to which he had alluded.  I enjoyed fresh hugah bread dipped in the goat and saffron stew while I waited for a chance to interrogate the easterner.  The stew was quite excellent; only the queen, of all the diners, failed to enjoy it.  She made a face when she tasted it and snapped peevishly at the servants.  Behind me, Bensakal laughed into his hand.

When the Melek finished with his speeches and poses, and his guests fell to talking among themselves in small groups, I took my opportunity.  After getting his attention and paying due care to show him great sympathy, I explained that I had been away on a trade mission and had not heard his news.

He needed little encouragement to tell his tale.  His eyes fired with eagerness at the prospect of a fresh listener, and his chin shook with agitation, like the muzzle of a hound working up its anger to bite.

“Sorcery,” was his unequivocal pronouncement.  “Sorcery!”  He showed me the palms of his hands, to be sure I knew he was not lying or exaggerating.

“It cannot be doubted,” I humored him.

“The Shasu have always been a problem, you understand,” he went on.  “Wanderers, beggars.  Bandits.  But they have always been like old or outcast wolves – stealing a lamb or a kid here or there, but easy to drive off to skulk in their caves in the hills.  An annoyance and a chore, but not a real threat.”

His description was easy for me to apprehend and appreciate, since this was how we at Yarich generally thought of the Amuru…I did not share this insight with the Prince.

“Dogs,” he went on.  “And less than dogs.  But then they fell in with this sorcerer – a hermit, you know the type.  An old man, the sort who hides in a cloister in the mountains or a pit in the desert, listening to the voices that come to him on the wind.  And then they weren’t such humble creatures any more.”

“Reports of sorcery are always about,” I replied.  “But try to track down the source of any of them.”

The prince nodded vigorously.  “True, true.”  He bowed his head respectfully in the direction of Shachath, who was engaged in conversation with one of the Egyptians.  “Of course, the power of the gods cannot be denied, and genuine priests must be respected.  But most stories one hears of wild men of the desert or mountain top performing miracles are nothing more than amusement for fools.”  He shuddered.  “But this old man, this wanderer…

“He called himself a priest of El, although he certainly could never have found a haven at any temple.  Any priestly college would have taken one look at his filthy, matted, wild hair, and his rags, and his black feet, and they would have striped his back and chased him back out to his hole.

“But you know the Shasu, they go into a frenzy when they see anything that smacks of magic.  And there were rumors, for a long time, of the wonders this sorcerer produced.  He convinced many to follow him, to wander in the desert in search of signs and visions from El.  Many men of no account – bandits, beggars, mercenaries – took up with him in this way.”

“I’ve seen that happen all too often,” I commiserated with him.  “Mercenaries with no post, the idle, men with no decent place in a city or village – we call them the habiru – they are very susceptible to such magicians.  If for no other reason than boredom.”

He nodded knowingly.  “This sorcerer proclaimed that El had revealed to him that he was the only true god, and that the other gods we worship were either lies or deceptions, or mere aspects of El the ‘Most High’.”

At this Shachath started a bit, and he turned his head away slightly from his own conversation with the Egyptians to listen with a thief’s ear to ours.  He must have heard the story of the fall of Gil’al before – but perhaps he had not heard the theological component of the tale.

“You should have hunted him down and gutted him as soon as you heard he was spreading that tale,” I replied.  If Shachath was listening, it was always best to put one’s piety on display.  But I made sure to remain courteous to the guest, who had suffered a recent terrible loss, after all, and who might resent advice that came too late to be of any use: “But I am sure you have reproached yourself for that much more than any poor words of mine could.”

“We tried!” he exclaimed.  He slapped the bottom of one great fist into his palm for emphasis.  Many present at the table were startled, and turned to face us.  “We tried,” he repeated, more softly.  The others turned away – all except Shachath, who was happy to have an excuse to leave off his own discussion and intrude upon my own.  “We sent men against him.  Enough to deal with his paltry band of mercenary scum.  Enough, and more than enough.”  He shook his head.

The despair in that shake of the head was overwhelming.

“Did you properly sacrifice?” Shachath interjected.  He was shivering like an oryx at the mere thought that a blasphemer such the Prince had described had not been defeated and apprehended.  “In what name did your men proceed?”

“I am not a priest!” the Prince replied.  “They went forth in the name of Baal of the River, as our men always would.  But I cannot speak to the quality of the sacrifice.”

“It was obviously lacking,” Shachath sniffed.

“Please!” I cut him off.  I could listen to his fussy formalism whenever I wished; I had no desire to let him impose it in the way of real news.  “I would like to hear what happened.”

“Of the men sent against him, only two returned.  They came back without their weapons, which they had cast away behind them.  One was covered in burns, as if he had been spitted over a fire.  His tongue had cracked open and he died before he could speak a single clear word.  The other had no wounds, but had gone mad, and babbled at random.  He tore at his own skin and flesh until he was covered in bloody gashes, and the only part of his speech that could be understood were blasphemous rants against the gods, who he claimed had abandoned him.”

Shachath scoffed.  “When cowards run, they invest the foe with whatever power seems necessary to justify their cowardice.  If they can blame their own god, and call him weak, so much the better.  A self-serving pretense to madness is also not unheard of.”

“In the end, he killed himself by cutting his own throat with a sharp stone, in front of the women of his house.”  The Prince let this linger in the air, so that the flat horror of it rebutted Shachath’s accusation.  “My father gathered our full strength, and that of our allies, and set out to stop the sorcerer and his…habiru.  I stayed behind to guard the homes of our folk.

“After three days, word reached me that the sorcerer’s scouts, and then his main force, had been spotted on the outskirts of some remote villages.  None of our men could be found opposing them.  We never saw any of them again.  The villagers reported that the sorcerer had my father’s body impaled on a withered tree that was carried before his army.  When I heard this, I gathered to me as many of my people as I could and fled west over the river.”

The table had fallen silent.  The Prince had gained listeners as he had reached the more lurid parts of his tale.  Even those who had heard it before could not help but listen again.  Shachath in particular was moved and disturbed by the story; his piety easily curdled into superstitious terror at the smallest excuse.  But even I felt my skin prickle – and my wide travels shepherding the goods of the city had deafened my ears somewhat to strange tales.  Only the Egyptians appeared to be unimpressed; the Eldest was completely relaxed, and continued with his meal in a casual manner.

“You will have your revenge soon enough,” the Melek at last interjected, breaking the eerie trance into which the silence was drawing us.

The Melek did not explain how this revenge would come to be, and the Prince did not say anything further, either.  The meal continued in a subdued atmosphere.  It grew darker, and the leavings of the table were passed at length to those on the benches and the floor.

Later, after I returned to my room, the Prince’s tale troubled my mind and I was unable to sleep.  I lay awake, rolling his words back and forth, listening to the creaking of the leather straps of my bed and to the loud breathing of Bensakal on his mat on the floor.

Flashes of lightning lit the high square of sky visible in the courtyard, again and again, although there were no clouds to be seen and the night was quite clear.  Finally a flash came that held its place in the sky, and did not flutter and recede, but burned on and on.  Disturbed, I rose from my crib and went out, stepping lightly to avoid rousing my son.

There was little more to be seen from the courtyard itself, so I made my way out on to the street.  Others were there, drawn out by the light as I had been drawn out, confused by it as I was confused.  For some reason, despite our confusion we did not call to or question each other.  Something stilled our tongues.  We walked the street in silence, speaking to each other only with our eyes, or with shrugs.  The broader range of sky visible from the street allowed me to see that the strange lightning-that-did-not-end came from the east, but gave me no clue as to its cause or origin.

I could see guardsmen from the Inner Gate House standing on top of the wall, pointing and gaping.  I gained admittance to the House, and clambered up one of its rope ladders to join the men on the roof.

Far in the east, over the horizon and beyond the River, a dark cloud billowed up from the earth.  The strange undying lightning arose from and blazed out of the cloud.  The cloud rolled and boiled like a fast-moving storm, but instead of moving from west to east as storms will, it merely rose higher and higher into the air, eating the stars.  We stood on the roof and stared, while saying nothing.  There was nothing to say.

After some minutes, the lightning at last failed, with as little explanation as it had begun.  The cloud vanished from my sight as the world returned to darkness once more.

THREE

Though the lion roars, though the king of beasts cries out, yet the teeth of the young lion are broken…

–         Job 4:10

The story of the strange light and cloud was on the lips of everyone in the city in the morning.  Those who had not seen it passed on what they heard from those who had.  But the citizens treated it as a wonder, and not a horror.  Baal had walked abroad, bringing day to night as if he might aspire to become as the sun itself; this is what our Priest whispered, and his servants repeated – though never in the earshot of any of our Egyptian guests.

I found Bensakal at the Scribes’ Kiln House, relating what I had told him of what I had seen to the old men there.  He was sitting on the stone bench where the couriers sat to wait for the tablets to be hardened, and telling the tale to the fireman and his boy with a vivid expression and with such animation that they probably believed he had seen the cloud himself.

“Father,” he greeted me.  “Settle this for us.  Some in the market were saying that the light was not one light at all, but many rapid flashes of lightning, arising from many sources, that ran together into one like drops of water into a bucket.  But I told them that it was one bright light, like a great fire in the belly of the cloud.”

“It was both,” I replied.  “At first, there were many flashes of lightning, but no thunder and no rain.  But then the lightning stopped, and the one great light burned for a long time.”

He frowned.  Apparently I had not settled the dispute in a manner that was to his liking.  You held that part of the story back from me! – his wounded expression said.  Young men are always so concerned with being right.

“Has the manifest of the goods from Tur been completed?” I asked him, to change the subject.

He pointed to the door to the next room.  “Old Rosofer is still working on it.”

“Yes, Rosofer is still working on it,” an old man’s trembling voice agreed from beyond the doorway.  “I will be done with it soon.”

I smiled.  Such a harmless old man now, but such a terror to me when I was a boy, and he taught me our signs with his rod against my legs.

I smiled again when I thought of Bensakal, who knew the old man even better than I, though he had never taken lessons.  This was far from his first time in the courier’s stone seat.  He had started haunting Rosofer and his assistants as soon as he could walk.  When he first clambered into that chair his feet had dangled down from it, swinging far above the ground.  From that post he had learned both our simple signs and the more complex ones of the Akkadians, merely by his pestering and questioning, and from the broken fragments of spoiled tablets the scribes and the firemen had given him to play with.  I had always had to be careful not to praise him too highly for this.

“We will return before the morning is out, then,” I called to the scribe.  “And Bensakal will add up your figures – so none of your games!” I gibed.

The streets of the upper city were crowded that morning.  The first two-month portion of the barley harvest that was due to holders of lower shares had been tabulated and was being distributed from the storehouses, and farmers and villagers and lesser craftsmen were assembled in lines that snaked almost down to the Inner Gate House.  I had business at the storehouse for metals and stone, and that made it necessary for Bensakal and I to work our way through the thickest part of the crowds.

As we walked, Bensakal was warmly greeted by many of the young men of the city, and by many of the villagers as well.  It was natural enough for him to have friends among the sons of the household heads, and the sons of those who served the Melek as I did; but I was surprised at the hails he received from the poorer men, and from those who lived beyond the city walls.  Many of them shared a quick word and laughed with him.

When we reached our destination, I met the steward on the steps there and spoke to him about arrangements for a trans-shipment of sulfur that was due to leave in less than a month.  Bensakal waited with his arms folded and watched the crowd while the steward and I spoke.  Guardsmen at one of the nearby corners were beating a man of one of the outer villages; he had tried, without success, to deceive one of the quartermasters and claim a higher share than was his due, counting on the relative anonymity of the men of the outer villages to cover his crime.  That was the only disturbance we saw that morning, though.  Otherwise, the mood of the people was good.  The barley harvest had come in quite well, and the distribution was larger than usual; the prospect of extra bread and beer cheered everyone’s hearts.

After I concluded my business, and as we prepared to leave, we were approached by one of the city guardsmen.

“I summon you to speak with our lord, who treads on us as on the dust,” he said.  The Melek was fond of encouraging the employment of vaguely divine-sounding honorifics for himself.  This one was close enough to liturgical references to Baal to come perilously close to blasphemy.

“All right, all right, “ I grumbled.  “Did he give you any hint as to what he wants to see me about?” I asked.

“Not you,” he replied.  He pointed at Bensakal.  “Him.”

The Melek met us in his presentation chamber.  The cosmetics of the night before were gone from his face.  Only a light rash decorated his cheeks and forehead this morning.

Painted plaster covered the floor and walls of the ceremonial hall.  The floor was divided into squares by lines of red paint; the squares themselves were painted with swirling colors that imitated marble and gypsum slabs.  Some of the squares were further painted with fine blue irises and yellow crocuses.  The walls were covered in a series of scenes depicting the great western sea: long boats sailed between small, white towns on rocky shores.  The Melek had never as much as glimpsed those flowers, those boats and that sea with his own eyes, but he loved to sit among them, and style himself before visitors as a pirate-king of the far islands of the west.  The incense-burner at his feet was a bust of Astarte carved out of a single large piece of basalt; that solid and respectable heirloom of the house clashed with the foreignness of the rest of the room, and somehow made it worse.

He was listening to his musicians when we arrived, and we were made to wait.  Interlocking rhythms were picked out on a sistrum, a cow’s-tooth rattle, and a set of bronze cymbals, while a boy chanted out an ode to Rp’u.  I could appreciate the complex artistry of it, even if my ear did not enjoy it.  The Melek was enraptured, and delighted in every note.

“Hear the task I have set for you,” he dreamily said, at last, when the music ended.

“I am eager for instruction, now, as ever,” I answered.

He sighed, in an exaggerated manner.  “I did not address you, Sakal.  Nor did I summon you.”  He sighed again, and his face sang a song of exasperation.  “How weary is this Great One!  How I struggle to have the most simple instructions obeyed!  The task is for Bensakal, and not for you.”

“No service can be demanded of my son except through me,” I replied.  “I share that privilege with the household heads.”

He bristled at this.  The privileges of holders of first shares were a sore point with him.  But it was true, and he knew it.  “I intended to address this with you later.  As we discussed…other matters.”

“Father, I would like to hear – “ Bensakal presumed to interrupt.

“Stop,” I told him.  Softly, but he knew I meant it.  I did not have to raise my voice.  “You will hear whatever is to be heard, of course.  But you have no voice here while I am present.”

“Enough!” the Melek snapped at us.  His gaze hardened, and I shrank a little before him.  When anger or annoyance concentrated his mind, the softness in his face disappeared, and you could see there was a sharp-edged flint inside him, available at need.  “Then I will speak with you, Sakal.”  He was very good at making his concession to my privilege look like it was his own will.  This was the result of his long practice at doing so.  “I want him to go to the east.  Go, see the land – and the river.  And the hills beyond.”

“Lord,” I replied.  “I do not understand.”

“The Prince of Gil’al is returning secretly to his land, to determine the conditions there.  I am sending some of the young men of Yarich along with him, to see what they may see.  Bensakal has accompanied you on the salt caravan many times.  None of the other younger men is as familiar with that country, and so Bensakal is needed.  And the fathers tell me that their sons all respect him.”

“If you need someone who knows the river valley and the lands of the Amuru,” I fumed.  “…then why not send me?  And if they go to spy out the army there, why send boys and not soldiers?”  Sweat beaded out on my face and lips at the thought of what the Melek proposed.  “Why send any of our people at all, since it is the Prince’s own land?”

“Sakal, Sakal,” he said, in a voice that was suddenly soft and friendly.  His manner changed so quickly that I was convinced he had rehearsed beforehand how to reason with my anger when it came.  He smiled.  “Do you think we can trust the Prince’s word?  We need the eyes and tongues of men of the city.  And I will send the younger men and not soldiers because the party must travel as bandits, in stealth – we need men who would escape notice.  And so I cannot send you - you would be recognized at once.  You are too well known as my man.”

These were fair points.  Against them I had only the fact that Bensakal was my son, and that I did not want him to go.  And these were not things that I could say.

I looked over at Bensakal, who was barely able to contain himself.  He knew that propriety called for him to subdue his heart and maintain a respectful posture, but his bright eyes flashed with more excitement than he could control.  His limbs were as tense as a wrestler’s, and a proud laugh threatened to burst from his lips.  He would have risen that very moment and charged into the east all by himself, if given the chance – that much was plain.

“Come, Sakal,” the Melek cajoled.  “Will you refuse this service of me?”  He had me, and he knew it.  My loyalty to the city; my son’s eagerness to prove himself and the pride he took the words he had heard; and the very merit of those words – he had me.

I have always been a fool.

“No, Great One,” I replied.  “No, I will not refuse you.  As you knew full well before you asked.”

And so it was done.

It took only two days from the time of the Melek’s request for the minimal preparations necessary to be made.  It was to be a small group, with only those provisions that could be carried by the men, and with no supply animals.  Abishar planned to live off the land and from the produce of those of his tribe who had not yet been driven from their homes.  This made the planning simple; the most difficult part was picking the men to go, and addressing the matter with their families without attracting notice.  By the afternoon of the second day there was nothing left to be done but to secure the favor of the heavens.

Bensakal and I went to the kohk to ask for courtesy from the family gods.  These Nameless Ones guard our footsteps on the road and across the waste, and stand special watch to keep our family blood from being spilled.  They can be invoked at any time, from anywhere, but they are most likely to hear entreaties from one who stands among his ancestors.

The cemetery field was northwest of the city.  We armed ourselves with torches and small clay containers to hold our offerings, and made the short walk together.  The kohk was on the older side of the cemetery, where the soil was thin and the stone had been easy to expose.  The entrance was an open hole at the top of a vertical shaft that looked like a cave.  Despite its appearance, it was not a natural formation; it had been chiseled out of the rock by hand, long ago.  It was one such hand-scratched hole among many in the cemetery, but we found it without difficulty; I had been coming here my entire life, and could probably have found the correct opening in the dark.

I went down first.  I lowered myself down the shallow angle of the shaft with my back flat against the wall, by keeping pressure on the far wall with my hands and feet.  Once I had made it to the bottom, Bensakal lowered a torch to me and then followed me down.  Together we were able to pry up the large flat stone at the bottom of the shaft that stoppered up the opening to the main chamber.

The main chamber was a round room, slightly wider across than a man is tall, but with a ceiling that was too low to allow us to stand up straight.  When the chamber had been chiseled out, a raised platform of rock had been left behind in the center of the space.  On the opposite side of the platform from the entrance, a chest had been carved out of the rock of the chamber wall.

Hot air escaping from the chamber made our torch flicker as I stepped inside.  The single torch reflected again and again off the red stone walls, and off silvery chisel marks that still glinted brightly despite being generations old.

She was on the platform, as always, and had not wandered.  Stretched out on a cushion of woven reed mats, she was just linen rags and bones now.  Her skull smiled at us as we entered.

“Greetings, wife,” I whispered.  I believe she gave me an acknowledgement, but I do not think I can describe the manner in which she did so, or say with certainty whether she nodded or moved or trembled.  My father’s skull peeked out from the top of the pile of bones in the stone ossuary-chest, and I believe that his empty eye sockets blinked at my greeting as well – that much, at least, I am confident I saw.  Since we had moved his bones to the ossuary to make room for Sarai, he had shown his jealousy over the attentions we paid her, and continued to be eager to claim them for himself.  Just as in life, he was unwilling to move aside for another even when custom and propriety said that it was their turn.

“Greetings, mother,” Bensakal whispered as he joined me in the chamber.  Though she had been here for many years now, there was still fresh grief in his eyes as he bowed his head in a gesture of respect, and as he fumbled to fill the bowls on the platform with the goat’s milk and flour he had brought.  I suppose I could bring more equanimity to the kohk than he could, if only because I knew I would join Sarai here soon enough.

While Bensakal busied himself with the kohk-meal, I checked to be sure that Sarai still had her necklace.  It was still there.  No grave-robber had disturbed it.    It was unwise of me to have left it here for so long, but she had loved it so much that I was loath to retrieve it and deny her the comfort of wearing it.  It had come from Lachish, at considerable expense.  Beads of quartz-glass – turquoise cubes and black spheres – were strung together with bronze pendants.  My heart was warmed yet again as I remembered the day I had given it to her, as we walked in the shade along a bank of palm-roses.

When Bensakal had completed his task, we stood together and addressed the Nameless Ones silently.  I asked them to protect my son upon the road and in the hills across the river, and to keep the eyes of the habiru from him, and to plead for him before El if the sorcerer did indeed speak to the world with the god’s voice.

I do not know what request Bensakal made – young men are often not content to wish for safety alone, or anything sensible, but make extravagant pleas for glory instead.  At least at first.  They learn better quickly enough, as we all do.

Our duties performed and our requests made, I turned to leave, dreading the climb back up the shaft.  Bensakal asked to remain behind for a moment alone.  I was happy to permit him this.  I smiled as I waited for him at the foot of the shaft; he was old enough to be sent into danger by the Melek, but not so old that he was not still shy to deliver some message of sweetness to his lost mother while his father looked on.  He was a good son, and both she and I were fortunate.

The men of the expedition could not sacrifice openly as a group for the favor of the moon god for the safety of the Prince’s return expedition to the river country.  This would have been the proper way to proceed, but certain adjustments to normal practice were necessary.  A ritual sacrifice in the name of the city always had a public component, and the departure of the group had to be accomplished in secret.

The young men who were to go, along with their fathers in cases where those fathers still lived, met alone at night on the columned porch outside the temple entrance.  No crowd gathered in the courtyard, and no goat was led up the temple stair to the high place.  Instead, each man – or each man with his father – was to enter the temple hall, and stand before the altar and the god in his niche, and promise a sacrifice upon his safe return.

One by one they entered through the low stone door, in various states of trepidation or excitement.  When our turn came, I let Bensakal enter first.  There was no fixed protocol that governed how a father and son would come before the god in such a circumstance, and I knew that allowing him to go before me would aid his confidence, and help him approach the altar without ill-formed fears in his mind.

We walked up to the altar with our eyes cast down, and knelt before it and sat on our heels.  Behind us, the sacred prostitute of Yarea danced and played the lute.  She wore a mask depicting Nikkal, the god’s consort, and wore bracelets and armbands of lapis lazuli.  Next to us, before the altar, knelt the sacred virgin of the god: the Singer.  Only she was permitted to look at the god directly; she stared at him and held her arms up in supplication.

The Singer chanted a hymn to Yarea, the divine moon, while we knelt before him.  She kept her voice low, and did not employ her full power.  Had she not limited herself to a melodic whisper, the veil of our secrecy would have been torn in short order.  Her voice was so strong and clear that when she employed its full volume a man with sharp ears could hear her even from the lower city.  Even at a whisper, her voice was still as lovely as she was; and that was beautiful indeed.  The first time she had raised her voice in song had made it inevitable that she would not be left to be Nahara the maiden, but would become the Singer Nahara.  Small and fine-boned, with the dark complexion of an easterner and giant black eyes – her features, combined with the clarity of her voice, had made it certain that she would be consecrated to the god.  They also accounted both for the demand of the Egyptians, and for the Melek’s refusal of that demand.  She was compelling enough to draw the eye despite the provocative dance of the sacred prostitute nearby.  It was no mystery why Amon would covet her for his temple.

When she finished the hymn, we murmured the words of the formula that acknowledged our future obligation.  She stood, and offered to each of us in turn a drink from a wine bowl she took from the altar.  She then anointed each of us with ointment from another container.  As she did so, her eyes met mine for a brief moment, and flashed; they lingered over Bensakal for somewhat longer.  She said nothing.  We then rose to a crouch and backed away from the altar, again taking care not to look directly at the god.

When we had withdrawn to a respectful distance and could rise and turn to leave, we were met by the pseudo-Nikkal, who presented Bensakal with a padded leather belt.  Covered in images representing the phases of the moon, it symbolized the god’s sanction of his mission.  We thanked her, in her aspect as Nikkal.  I then left.  Bensakal lingered in the sanctuary for another few moments, no doubt adding a second vow, and then he followed me.

Outside in the dark the others were now shadows, or sharp profiles in torchlight.  Bensakal regarded his belt for some moments in what I mistook for solemn contemplation, before he spoke:

Who is like you, Lady Hurraya?

Who among the damsels, Fair One?

From this I gathered that I was not the only one to note the loveliness of the Singer.  My son noted it enough to recall he anguish of Kret.  He did not speak again after that, but fell in line with the others as they marched silently out of the temple courtyard and down the east stair.

The city was never completely silent at night.  Infants would wail; rats would scurry.  But Yarich was not like great Hazor, where the night would bring out young men soaked in beer, and bored soldiers and mercenaries looking to brawl with them; despite the night-sounds, our streets were all but empty, and would stay that way until nearly dawn.  We made our way through the lower city and past the still houses in silence.  The Prince and his men joined us by the tents of his folk, falling in with us without words, as silent as thieves.

We saw no one until we had walked nearly all the way to the Outer Gate House.  Just before the Gate, among the dwellings of the holders of lesser shares, there were many ramshackle one-room homes built with walls one brick thick.  One of those hovels housed a group of harlots who served the farm hands and water carriers who lived outside the city.  As might be expected, men would come and go whenever the Gate was open, and those caught late when the Gate closed at night would loiter outside the harlots’ door, or sleep on the doorstep until morning.

This night was the same as other nights; when we passed by the harlots’ house, a small gang was outside.  Milling about were a few salt-haired old men without wives or teeth, a few of the city’s more energetic guardsmen, and a handful of visitors from the outer villages, caught – accidentally or purposefully – inside the walls when the Gate was closed for the night.  On this occasion there was also a pair of dusty-men; goat-sellers, or perhaps caravaneers.  They were not known to me by sight, but they wore long cloaks of felt bound about them by leather cords, in the manner of desert herdsmen.  They were fascinated by our procession, and stared long at us as we marched by.

The Gate was still closed at this hour, but the guardsmen knew of our enterprise and passed us through as discreetly as they could.  One of the guards silently clapped a passing friend on the shoulder, to lend his encouragement.  Others nodded to friends of their own.

Once outside the gate, we followed the east road by starlight.  After traveling a short distance in the direction of the River, we stopped.  It was time for the fathers to turn back, and the sons to continue alone.  I nodded quickly to Bensakal; I did not want him to be undermined before his fellows by any demonstration of emotion from me.  Other fathers were not so restrained.  Many embraced or made urgent, if hushed, declarations of feeling.  Bensakal exchanged some words with the Prince that I could not hear, and then quickly got our young men into order.  And then they were gone, and he was gone.

We watched them as they proceeded to the east and descended further into the depths of the valley.  They did not remain visible for very long; sunrise was still far off, and their shadowy shapes quickly dissolved into the black of the plain.  We turned back towards the city when no sign of them could any longer be discerned.

I walked with my friend Mozel, who held a second share and who often joined me at the Melek’s table.  He had two sons who were heading east with Bensakal, and even though they had only taken the first few steps into the dark his face was already etched with care.  When he became aware that I was looking at him, he did his best to change his expression to a strong one.

“Like arrows in the hands of the soldier are the sons of one’s youth,” he said to me, quoting the proverb.  “Happy is the man whose quiver is full of them.”

I had to agree with that.  I did not tell him – I did not need to tell him – that the man who shoots those arrows blindly into the night is less happy.

Much less.

FOUR

For I have a word to tell you; an utterance, to now declare unto you:

The word of the tree and the whisper of the stone; the sound of the heavens to the earth; of the deeps to the stars.

–         The Cycle of Anath

The days rolled forward towards the wheat harvest and its associated festival.  The sun grew hotter as the summer advanced, and the dew grew less.  The night of the cloud and the strange light was gradually forgotten, and the more petty news of daily life resumed first place in all minds.  Or nearly all, in any event.

The citizens did not discuss or gossip over the young men who had left, or upon their mission.  Too many men came and went to the city every day, on one errand or another, for anyone to miss a group that had taken pains not to be noticed.  When the fathers of those who had gone came upon each other in the market or on some street or stair, they might hail each other silently with a look or small gesture; but other than this private acknowledgement, Bensakal and the others may as well have vanished.

The Melek had cancelled all the caravan journeys we had planned, so I was left without much activity and at the mercy of my thoughts.  I could not fault him for this; it was the correct course of action to take. Even if the Prince’s tales were exaggerations, an armed force was abroad in the land, and the storehouses were the best place for the city’s goods.  We had ridden out other such disorders by withdrawing behind our walls in the past.  We were very active in the carry trade, and disruptions to our schedule were costly; but not as costly as a total loss of one or more shipments of goods would be.

I busied myself overseeing the city’s small dye works.  The hanikim who ran the works was ill with the pains of the abdomen that are common to men who take up that craft.  I spent many days bent over vats carved out of limestone boulders, helping the dyers soak the cloth and wring out the excess dye.  The acrid smells of the dye burned my eyes and unsettled my liver; after the first few days, it was no longer any surprise to me that the master of the works was ill so often.

Shachath became intolerable during these weeks, as he did every year as the major festivals drew near.  Bad omens revealed themselves to his nervous eyes several times a day.  There was no bird or snake within a day’s travel of Yarich that did not give him fits by flying or crawling by in some inopportune way.  Every plateful of food placed before him at the table possessed some scent or color that drove him to apoplexy.  None of the preparations for the festival undertaken by his staff satisfied him; he would rage at all of his subordinates so loudly that his shouts could be heard from the street, and the bruises on the faces of some of the apprentices of his college told the tale of the beatings he handed out to them.

It was the Priest’s task to be sure that the Melek would properly perform his role in the festival that fortified Baal for his seasonal struggle with Mot in the underworld.  Unfortunately for him, the current Melek took a great interest in the festival rituals as exercises in poetry or song, but took less interest in them as religious observances.  Our lord spent eight days continually proposing additional lines – of greater or lesser quality – and changes in the musical accompaniment.  It threatened to drive Shachath mad.  I stopped attending the nightly table, to avoid their quarrels and the anger that the Priest turned on all around him.  I employed the same series of excuses for this purpose that I ran through every year.

The Egyptians disappeared from the palace, but not from the city.  The Melek would not see them; he did not want to encourage them in their demand.  Shachath was too prickly with agitation to provide them even with professional courtesy or diplomatic kindnesses.  They found a host among the household heads and traded a small part of the gold they had brought for a store of supplies.  Once so established, they prepared themselves and the image they bore for a long wait.

I found myself missing Bensakal a great deal.  This was strange for me, and new.  I had spent most of my days away from him.  He had walked with me on only a fraction of my many journeys.  The cooks of the palace and the scribes and craftsmen of the city had done more to raise him than I had.  But I had always been the one to leave, before, and he had always been the one to be left behind.  This was the first time I had spent in the city without having him with me.  Pangs chimed in my heart, echoing from the quiet corners of my rooms and from around the corners of the city’s streets, like I had not heard or felt since his mother’s time.

And I did not merely miss him; I feared for him, too, as any father might.  I dreamt of the cloud often.  In my dream the cloud would enter the city and boil down the streets like a flood or avalanche, blinding and choking those caught in its path.  It would pour through doorways into houses and down through the roof openings into courtyards.  It would turn faces and tunics black, and dampen all sound, filling the air with an eerie silence.  I would try to seek out Bensakal, to warn him; I would run frantically around the palace and the temple.  I would be sure that if I could just find him, I could keep him safe.  At last around some corner I would see him, and would open my mouth to call to him – but I would not be able to shout, or even speak a single word.  He would turn on his own, and see me – but then the cloud would reach us, and it would drag him down.   His breath would be smothered and his eyes would turn into pits of black.

– Then I would start awake, and look for Bensakal on the floor beside me.

And would not find him.

At last Shachath emerged from the temple complex one morning and announced that the lord of the sickle, and the illuminator of the myriad, had advanced the needed distance into the constellation of the bow.

It might have been simpler just to say that it was time for the wheat harvest to begin, but the priests cannot do without their rhetorical flourishes; they are song-addled, too, in their own way.

Shachath’s acolytes dressed the Melek in a long purple robe, which wrapped tightly around his round belly and forced him to walk with narrow steps.  With a great many of those narrow steps, the Melek then walked from the palace to the temple, bearing a flint sickle in one hand and a palm frond in the other.

The citizens watched him along the way and held their breaths; were he to stumble, or drop either of the ceremonial objects, it would reveal the displeasure of the gods and foretell a year of ill luck.

After he reached the temple, he made his way past the citizens crowded into the courtyard there, and entered the sanctuary, followed by the holders of first shares.  Reciting the words of the liturgy that told the tale of the death of Baal at the hands of Mot, he burned the frond as an offering, and used the sickle to slit the throat of the sacrificial kid-goat.  As he did so, Shachath held his breath with worry – but without need; as always, the Melek did not follow through on his threat to employ his own words, but instead properly recited:

They tangle like hippopotami;

Mot is strong, Baal is strong.

They gore like buffaloes;

Mot is strong, Baal is strong.

They bite like serpents;

Mot is strong, Baal is strong.

And so forth – continuing to the end without error or improvisation.

Shachath advanced to the altar when the sacrifice was complete, with his linen bag filled with models of the goat’s organs – liver, lung, heart.  When he drew a liver from the bag, he knew which organ to examine for the auspices.  After removing and examining the liver for some time, and comparing it to the marks on the clay token, he pronounced the sacrifice satisfactory, and assured us that when Baal rose from the underworld in the autumn he would be sustained by our gift.  The goat was then boiled in its mothers’ milk to serve as the ritual meal.

Later, after we had eaten and toasted the god, the Singer and seven other maidens, costumed and masked as the Kotharat, led a procession out of the city to the sheds where the reaped wheat was to be flailed.  Nahara sang as they walked, to call upon the Healers to renew the land after the harvest was completed:

Hale Ones, enter the threshing floor;

Divine Ones, come into the plantations…

This procession was not so august as that of the Melek had been.  It had no prescribed form, and thus whatever missteps might arise were much less dangerous.  The queen marched along, as did many other women of the high-share families; but they merely supported the procession, and her presence did not make it a royal event.

All along the way, children ran beside the maidens, pointing at their masks and laughing with delight.  The young men of the city – and some of the old men, as well – called out exclamations at the beauty of the girls, or joined in the song in the stretches of it where they anticipated the words.  The queen slashed at some of the bolder boys with a switch; their impropriety annoyed her, and she did not restrain herself from giving voice to that annoyance.  The festival’s celebratory atmosphere allowed the boys to get away with heckling her in return.

In my travels I had seen the festivals of many cities, and I always wondered why ours took the particular form that it did.  There were cities where the struggle between Baal and Mot was celebrated after the wheat harvest had been completed, and not before it started; still others where it took place in conjunction with the barley harvest, and not the wheat.  In many places, the priests would have been outraged to see mortal girls in masks representing the Kotharat; still others denied that the Healers were divine at all, but held them to be nothing more than the relatives of a king in an ancient epic poem, and denied them any role in Baal’s rite.

Then again, here in Yarich there seemed to be no reason to sacrifice to succor Baal in his battle with Mot.  In our oasis Mot won no yearly triumph over the land during the dry summer; the never-failing springs allowed our fields to be sown with a cover crop during the hot months, and we did not need to wait for Baal to return with the autumn rains.  So why hold these ceremonies in Yarich at all?  Why not simply serve Yarea alone, to honor him that much greater?  It was all endlessly confusing to anyone who knew the traditions of other lands, and who gave the matter some thought.

I wanted, that festival day, to meditate on the disputations of the priests at length – to spend the afternoon on it, in fact.  At the end of the Singer’s procession, the maidens had taken jars of new beer brewed of barley from that year’s harvest and unsealed them by breaking off their dried-mud tops; they had then distributed the warm and aromatic mash to all who asked.  I had naturally taken a deep bowl for myself, and I had my feet in the water of a canal and my straw in my hand.  In that position I would have ruminated on these questions until evening, and perhaps argued them with random passerby after the beer had worked its will upon me for a while.  In that way, I hoped, I might put my concern for Bensakal out of my mind for a few damp hours.

I was not given the chance to spend the holiday in this way, however.  Events move forward, regardless of any man’s desire to sit in the shade of the palms and enjoy what the Egyptians claim to be the gift of the divine Osiris; I was to be drawn away by happy news.

A guardsman appeared at my side, and blocked out the sun.  The Melek had sent him to summon me.  A runner had returned to the city, arriving that very hour with the first word from Bensakal.

FIVE

Pour from a cup of silver, wine; from a cup of gold, honey.  Go up to the top of the tower; ride on the shoulders of the wall.

–         The Epic of Kret

The guardsman did not lead me into the city, but to the royal stables.

The stables west of Yarich were almost a separate town unto themselves.  The chariot horses required more space than they could be given inside the city walls, so they had a walled complex of their own.  It was sheltered between the city and the western heights, and watered by a canal that ran directly from the great spring.  It was forbidden to plant any crops on the banks of that canal, or to graze any animal there; nothing that could sully the water with filth before it reached the horses was permitted.  The walls were mud brick, and were not very high or wide; they were designed to keep out thieves, or raiders who might blacken their faces and creep in to hamstring the beasts, and not to form a bastion for defense.  Inside the long rectangle made by the walls were barracks for the grooms, storehouses for feed, and the horses themselves.  The armory that held the chariots was not here, but was adjacent to the palace; there was a limit to how much of his wealth and strength the Melek could abide storing outside the security of the upper city.  The stables themselves were not brick structures, but were constructed with tall palm trunks as pillars holding up roofs thatched with reed; this made fire a constant danger, but the city’s horse-handlers had long been convinced that beasts housed in brick were more subject to disease – the greased-hoof sickness and the lying-down sickness in particular.

When the Melek or the household heads were not in the city, you could generally find them here.  Horse-madness competed with song-madness for the rule of the hearts of Yarich’s leading men.  Space was set aside in the stables for the horses of any who could be called to serve in the chariot corps – and this included headmen of the outer villages, who were often in attendance here as a result.  Even at harvest time or on festival days, they would all dash to the stables upon the completion of their ritual duties, and spend their time exercising their beasts or haggling over future breeding arrangements.

This day was no exception.  The Melek was there with the royal grooms, who were running his favorite animal, a strong and ill-tempered beast he called Shakhuri.  Even more of the other charioteer devotees were present than usual; they were so thick on the ground that there was barely room to stand along the fences of the exercise grounds, and they raised a frightful racket cheering the Melek’s dark devil as it ran the course.

As I made my way across the stable grounds, my stomach boiled and steamed.  What if the guardsman had gotten the message wrong, and the news was not from my son, but of him?  Then it might be anything.  It might be that his skull was even now bleaching in the sun of some wasted hillside of the Amuru.

“Sakal, there is news!”  My lord squinted at me in the afternoon glare, and held up one hand to spare his eyes.  At the stables he dispensed with the servants who usually held a shade over his head when he walked outside; no doubt they clashed with the impression of virility and martial vigor he wished to convey.

“So I have heard, Great One,” I replied.

“I wanted you to hear, since the one who brought it took it straight from the mouth of your son.”  He pointed to a young man who rested on the ground in the shade of the eaves of the stable’s roof.  I vaguely recognized the youth as one of those who had gone to the east.  This was difficult; he was filthy, and his clothes were travel-worn, and he looked every bit the bandit he wanted to appear.

Relief surged through me to hear my hope confirmed.  Who cared what the news was?  The greater news was that Bensakal lived, and had not been devoured by the habiru like a river rat by a snake.

The Melek clapped his hands once, to get the attention of the grooms.  “Run him again!” he barked.  It was all part of his performance, his imitation of how he imagined the ruler of a city should act when before his soldiery…but he was so good at it that I smiled.

We leaned over the fence while the horse was readied for another turn on the exercise course.  To anyone observing us from a distance, we would have looked like idle nobles diverting themselves with a horse.  We used this minor subterfuge from time to time.

“The sorcerer is dead,” he told me, without turning his head.  “Once across the River, your son met many who fled before the habiru.  Enough of those they met repeated the same tale to make it likely to be true.”

“Then the danger has subsided?”  I replied to him sidewise as well.

“No.  It appears that the sorcerer may actually have been dead for some time.  A mercenary captain leads his folk now, and may have led the attack that crushed Gil’al.  The situation is very confused.”

“I see.”  It was a sad fact that the information upon which our decisions had to be made was always incomplete, or garbled, or old – and that it always became more of all three of these at the worst possible times.

“Bensakal has not been able to sight their main force, but has taken to spying on their scouts, and now guesses the direction of the overall advance based on the ground the scouts examine.  A clever approach, actually,” he said, with an odd look of sympathy for me on his face.

“Bensakal has taken to spying?  What of Abishar?” I asked.   “I thought he was to be in the lead.”

“Bensakal now leads our men.  The Prince and most of his retinue are scouring the countryside east of the River, gathering together whatever survivors of Gil’al they can.  That has not been hard to do – all who live there have taken flight, and are on the paths and roads.  The habiru are slaughtering all they find, and not even taking slaves.  They are killing the young and the old, the women and the men, and taking the farms and villages for their own.  Anyone who has legs under them has taken flight.  Abishar intends to assemble whatever men he can, and to meet us at the River.”

“To meet us, my lord?” I repeated, grimly.  “We will take the field?”

He slapped one hand against his chest, pretending to cheer encouragement to Shakhuri as the groom trotted him past us.  “Butchery of the kind your son describes – better to meet it by the River, and not in our own villages and fields.  As soon as the harvest is completed, we will go.  We can’t afford to bring men in from the outer villages while they’re still needed in the fields, or we would go today.” He was clearly disturbed and disgusted, and intended me to join him in this.  “And even if we don’t go out to meet them, it might not make any difference.  Bensakal concluded his message with a warning: the habiru are gradually working their way west.  We will talk together about this again soon.”

He walked away from me, calling for the light-frame chariot he used in training.  After he took a few steps, he began a new sidewise discussion with one of the household heads present – one whom I knew could outfit and deploy nine such chariots from among the sons and younger brothers of his house.  He would continue to go from one clandestine conversation to the next for as long as the ruse could be maintained.  Since he was clearly done with me, I turned away.

The Melek had given me no specific instructions, but he did not need to.  My role in military operations outside the city was well defined.  As the caravan-master, I would be responsible for arranging the supply train.  I would be expected to see to my own bow as well, of course, but I was needed more for my knowledge of geography and the transport of goods than as one more mediocre bowman.  The poet would say:

He shall break bread of the fifth,

Even hardtack of the sixth month

Until the host is supplied.

But there was more to it than that, of course.  The Melek would think of the horses and the chariots and the soldiers; I would think of the donkeys and the bread and the fuel for the cook-fires.  And the water.  And the feed.  And everything else.

I left the stables and walked back along the road to the city, mentally making a list of the men with whom I would need to speak.  The beer and the canal-bank were forgotten and not regretted.

As I passed through the Outer Gate House and into the city, I searched the faces of the guardsmen and of the passerby.  How many of them knew that Yarich would go to war?  How many of them were even now quietly carrying out royal commands, as I was?  How many were still enjoying the festival in happy ignorance?  And how long would it be until the secret got out, and the city was swept by the mania of excitement that war brought?

I saw the face of the steward of the royal wheat granaries.  He looked pensive and concerned; perhaps he knew what pressure would now be brought to have the harvest yield threshed and stored in the shortest time possible?  I saw two men sitting outside the field-hands’ whorehouse with faces at once strange and familiar, and with nothing in their eyes but vacant boredom.  There would be more than whores for them to think about soon enough!  I saw the faces of three young toughs, laughing and drinking beer; they were the sons of a third-share man I knew, and were happy enough to have a day out of the fields and in town.  They clearly knew nothing; had they even an inkling, they would have been running about shouting the news to their friends, and drunkenly boasting of what heroes war would make them.

It was not until the sun had sunk low in the sky and bronze shadows had crept into the streets and courtyards that I remembered:

I had visited various storehouses and shared a word with the important men there.  I had gone to the part of the palace where the boys who ran messages queued to wait for assignments, and had dispatched runners to the two ass stables to summon the stable-masters for instructions.  All the while a thought had teased at the back of my mind, and there had been a feather twirling in my chest.  It finally came clear to me as I stood outside the door of my rooms and poured over my head a dipper of water from the basin there: the two dusty men outside the whorehouse were indeed strangers to me, but I had seen them before nonetheless.  Those very men had stood in almost the same spot the night that Bensakal had left the city.  They had watched the party depart.  The way they had stared had etched itself into my memory, like the deep scratch of a sharp stone upon a block of flint.

“Three weeks is a long time to spend visiting a whorehouse,” I mumbled to myself, shaking my head.  “Even a god would satisfy himself in much less time.”

I ran through the palace complex, my belly shaking and my fillet askew.  The Melek had returned from the stables, but he was not receiving petitioners and was absent from the presentation chamber, and the other places where he could usually be found.  I was quite winded by the time I tracked him down.  He was in a small room near the center of the palace that was windowless and did not open upon any other room with access to the outside or to direct sun.  Two smoky lamps lighted the dark little room; its walls were covered in spells against thieves and spies.

He was there with Ibiranu, the Arkil Markabti or master of chariots, as well as some of the older men who had been on several campaigns. Ibiranu only rarely came into the city, and spent most of his time on his estate.  He was an avid hunter in the western hills, of both beasts and men, and was known as a bandit-killer.  It was not his love of sport that kept him out of the city, though; it was the mistrust and jealousy of the Melek.  Ibiranu was large, and striking-looking, and intelligent, and as a result was much admired by the soldiers and the first-share men – and was therefore exactly the type of man no city’s ruler wanted outside his door too often.

As I caught my breath I noticed that all those at this small conference looked at me strangely: I still held the dipper from the courtyard basin in my hand.

“Sakal, my friend – when I said that we would speak again, I did not mean for it to be so soon.”  My lord was amused.  I doubted he would remain so.  “Or is your task as quartermaster beyond your skill?”

“Lords.” I bowed my head slightly, and pointed with the dipper to each wall in turn.  “Would that these words of power could cover the entire city.  There are spies at large in Yarich.”

This news produced great commotion.  I related how I had seen and noted the faces of the two strangers on the night of Bensakal’s departure, and how I had seen the same men in the same place this very afternoon.  All those present instantly shared my suspicion, and loudly declared so.

“You see?”  The Melek waved a finger at Ibiranu.  “I told you that our subterfuges were not pointless!”  Apparently there was some dispute here to which I was not privy – one in which my lord was so eager to be proven right that he was almost happy to hear that there were spies in his city.

“I did not say that they were pointless, Great One,” Ibiranu replied, in a tone of pained tolerance that I knew only too well myself.

Our lord strode out the doorway, and into the shadowy hall.  The rest of us fell over each other as we hastened behind him in confusion.

“Summon guardsmen!” he ordered.  “Go to the lower city!”  None of us were certain to whom this command was directed.  He turned on his heel and poked one finger into Ibiranu’s chest.  “Take Sakal with you, to identify the guilty ones!”

After gathering guardsmen as directed – but not too many; Ibiranu, as per his reputation, liked to take direct action with his own hands – we hurried to the lower city.  A crowd of festival-goers, heavy with beer, had gathered at all of the whorehouses, and our target was no exception.  After I pointed the place out, Ibiranu waded into the queue of men outside the door with a club, cuffing heads and cracking knees.  The guardsmen were only too happy to get some exercise by following his example.  When the men from the queue – all of whom were innocent, as I could have told the Arkil Markabti, had he merely waited a moment or taken the time to ask – were subdued and kneeling against the building wall, he advanced inside, and handed out the same treatment to the house’s customers.  For a few moments, shouting and aggrieved exclamations came from inside, and then the customers piled out the door, cursing and bleeding and limping; some of them naked, some of them merely disheveled.

My verdict was instantaneous.

“They aren’t here,” I said, shaking my head.

“Are you sure?” Ibiranu asked.  “Perhaps you should look them over again.”

“I don’t need to.  I’m sure,” I replied, firmly.  “The men I saw were clear outlanders.  These – “ I waved to the crowd of frightened men kneeling up against the wall, “ – could not be more of the city if they lived in the temple.  I know the names of half of them.”

He turned away from me and to the guardsmen, who were now in high fever, drunk on the swing of the club.  “Bring out the whores,” he snapped.

The guardsmen were less rough with the women, but not by much.  The whores at least had been sensible enough to quickly put on clothes when the guardsmen had dragged their customers away.

We established that the mistress of the house was named Rahab.  The others were happy enough to point her out, and we separated her from the others.  She was older than most of the whores, but not yet a crone.

“Where are the foreigners who have been hiding among the customers of your house?” Ibiranu demanded of her.  “They have come to spy out the land.”

Her forehead worked as she tried to decide how to answer.  “They left, and I do not know where they went.  Some hours ago they went down to the Gate.  But not so long ago that you cannot catch up to them.”

Ibiranu struck her in the face with his open hand.  This knocked her to the ground, and when she looked up her face was in flames and her mouth and nose bled freely.  He was quite strong.

“Foreigners stay in your house for weeks, and you think it is just your good luck?” he raged.  “You sow!  You knew that they were spies, and sheltered them!  We should treat you as we would treat them!”

She groveled on the ground at his feet.  “No, no!” she denied.  “We thought they were bandits.  I swear!  They said – they said – “ She choked on blood, and had to stop for a few moments.  “I heard one say they had been recognized, and that they should go to the caves.  The caves!”

He turned away from her cowering form and to the guardsmen.  “They’re done,” he said, flatly.  “Strip them, empty the house.  Down to the walls.  They don’t get to keep a single bean.  March them out of the city and set them on the road.”

The whores were already wailing even before he finished.  Rahab crawled on the ground and clung to his feet.  He ignored her begging, and did not even bother to kick her.

As the guardsmen set themselves to their task, Ibiranu sought me out.

“I had hoped you were just conjuring spirits out of war-fear,” he said.  “But the whore knew.  When I heard her lies, I knew you were right.”  He had to shout, as the whores shrieked louder while the guardsmen tore their garments, and as citizens nearby who had heard the order given by the Arkil Markabti rushed into the house to carry off all they could.  “This proves that they’re coming, after all.  He was right.”  A man ran out of the whorehouse, carrying a heavy jar of oil; another came behind him carrying a torn reed mat.  Ibiranu shook his head.  “He will be insufferable now.”

The spies were not found.  The caves in the hills to the west were searched – and the road to the east as well; it would have been foolish to regard Rahab’s account of the spies’ departure as reliable or as well intentioned.  An old hermit who lived in one of the caves was dragged out to be examined, and was beaten by the guardsmen all the way down into the valley.  After I pronounced him innocent, he dragged himself back up the hill on old and twisted feet, cursing us loudly the entire way.  A few other unlucky travelers suffered similar indignities until they could be brought before me, and I could establish that they were not the men we sought.  But no sign of the two dusty men was ever uncovered.

The Melek did become insufferable, as predicted.  He seized every chance to tell the story of how he had suspected that spies were in the city.  As the tale grew with each retelling, after just a day or two he had embellished it with dramatic scenes where all of his officers, and all the nobility, refused to believe his warnings – but he won the day by standing his ground, alone.  When the spies could not be found, he became convinced that they had detected our preparations for war and had left in haste to bring this urgent news to their fellows – and as a result, he immediately lost interest in any further attempts at secrecy.  This made my tasks somewhat easier, since I could make my arrangements openly; but I could not help but think that if our secret had not really been discovered, we were giving it away.

Shachath was the happiest I have ever seen him.  As nervous and peevish as he had been in the days leading up to the festival of Baal’s descent, that was how happy he became when the harvest was completed and the preparations for war had begun.  The fertility rituals of the festival had given him only the chance for error and blame; the sacrifices that would precede a military advance to the river gave him the chance to call forth the power of Baal and the favor of Yarea, to the ruin of our enemy.  Fertility is the day-to-day business of the priests, and thus over time it earns their contempt; war is their holiday.

The occasion called for a triple sacrifice.  Shachath and his assistants scoured the land around the city to seek out a perfect and unblemished ox, and an equally flawless sheep.  I have heard that in many places the third offering is often a fish, particularly when bringing a fish alive from the distant sea would be very difficult and the sacrifice therefore rendered more valuable; but Shachath chose as an alternative a wild gazelle, which had been raised by hand by one of the village headmen after having been found orphaned.  The assistants who were given the task of handling the animals were not showered with blows, as usually would have been the case; Shachath was in such a fine humor that he cheered them with encouragement instead, and even aided them in the small tasks of feeding the beasts and keeping them clean.

Perhaps his mood was kept fine in part by the lack of interference he received from the Melek.  Other than getting fitted for the vestments that would clothe him as Baal in his aspect as a war god, our lord took no part in the ceremonial preparations.  He had no time to torment his Priest with suggestions or prying questions.  He was too busy – far too busy.  Men poured into the city as their reaping was completed, leaving behind their women set to the threshing.  Our lord had to greet them all; to falsely – but convincingly – praise their courage and skill; to eat with them; to work them into our order of battle and sort out disputes of precedence.  And I – I had to feed them, and find rooms in the houses of the city for those men who could not politically be pushed into a hut by the canals, and find craftsmen who could repair the scales of their armor or the spokes of their chariots.

Two nights before we departed, those who had assembled feasted in the courtyards of the palace.  They were so many, and so boisterous, that they spilled out of those yards and into the streets of the upper city.  Wine flowed freely out of the royal storehouses.  Many of the men from the villages were not accustomed to wine, and drank it down like beer; there was much drunkenness as a result.

I can admit that I indulged myself as well:  I shared a bowl or two in friendliness with the men who would lead those who wrangled the donkeys.  I drained a large goblet with the Melek, in drinking-race fashion; he was racing everyone whose name he could still remember while drunk.  He laughed loudly when I won, and embraced me before moving on to race someone else.  I met four or five of the fathers of those in Bensakal’s party, including my friend Mozel; we drank together, long and deep, and talked wildly of how we would soon march to support our boys.

“If my son has not been obedient of his muru-u – “ one of the fathers declared in a soggy oath, “I will put him over my knee!  Over this very knee, I tell you!” he shouted, slapping the knee in question vigorously.  It surprised and pleased me to hear him refer to Bensakal using the term reserved for field officers.  The usage was not, strictly speaking, legal or appropriate.  A muru-u was a unit commander in a battle line, and not the chief of a group of spies or scouts; but I, and the wine, let it pass.  “He’s not so big that I can’t!  You’ll see!” he continued – and then he burst into drunken and sentimental tears.

I did not think that after nearly a month across the river any of our sons were going to be put to the rod by any of us, ever again.

A number of the charioteers began a dance in the round.  Each of them held one arm rigid and flat against their sides, and held a dagger in the air with the other hand.  Others outside the circle clapped their hands to keep the time, or waved kerchiefs woven in their family patterns in little circles in the air.  After many such dances the Melek, drunker still, forced his way into the center of the circle and as a new dance began bellowed his favorite verses from the lay of Anath’s revenge:

Under her bounce severed heads, like vultures;

Over her fly severed hands, like locusts;

She plunges knee-deep in the blood of heroes;

Neck-high in the gore of troops.

Spittle flew from his mouth and the men roared their approval.  Including me.  Caught up in drink and song and shared speech, we wanted a battle to start there and then.

That is not how it goes, of course.  The enemy does not usually present themselves at such a moment, and may the gods save you if they do.

But we wanted it.

The next day we wore the evening’s proceedings on our ashen faces and in our cracked red eyes.  The Melek was worst off of all.  Luckily, he did not need to do any more during the day’s sacrifices than sit upright and wear the garb of Baal that had been prepared for him.  He managed to accomplish both of these tasks, even if he looked to be on the verge of collapse while doing so.

Shachath, on the other hand, beamed.  He had taken no part in the drinking-bouts of the night before, and was nearly the only man in the city with a lively step.  He strode through his ceremonies as if he himself held the power of the god in each hand, to cast like thunderbolts.

After the gazelle was offered, Nahara sang of the irresistible might of Baal.  It was a beautiful melody, performed by temple musicians on the lute and on the instrument of the double reed.  And this time there was no chanted husky whisper; the Singer put forth her full power, and her voice rang out over the heads of those assembled in the temple courtyard, and over those who could not fit in the courtyard and waited on the streets outside, until she was indeed heard by men who lingered in the lower city:

Baal Hadadd, turn them into withered grass, into chaff flying before the wind.

As a fire raging through a forest, a flame setting mountains ablaze.  Pursue them with your tempest.  Terrify them with your storm.

When the song was completed, the people stood hushed with admiration.  A passing flock of birds alighted in the courtyard near where the Singer stood. They hopped about for a few moments, rustling their wings, and then flew away again.  The people murmured, and I thought that Shachath’s head would burst as it swelled in vanity and joy.  Even the Singer lost her poise a little, and when she smiled she was a young girl again for a moment, and not the cool servant of the god.  Everyone knew that the actions of the birds were a clear omen showing that the god had attended and had been pleased by the sacrifices and the song.

SIX

I will send my terror ahead of you, and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come; and I will make all your enemies turn their backs on you.

I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you.

–         Exodus 23: 27-28

By the following morning my head pains had finally passed.  I could face the prospect of a march without gritted teeth.  Even the Melek and his charioteers, who had brutalized themselves the most, had fully recovered.  With clear eyes and clear heads we gathered on the assembly field outside the city on the east road.

That clarity was sorely needed.  The field was a chaos of men and animals.  To put a chariot corps and accompanying infantry into the field required a minimum of four horses per chariot – a primary team and a pair of replacements – and one ass per six men for supplies.  Yarich could field nearly one hundred chariots of all weights, with six hundred infantry in support.  Donkeys brayed, and fought their handlers; horses neighed, and bit each other.  Men shouted and complained and dashed about to find their place.  Dust rose into a clotted mass and drifted towards the city.  The Melek bellowed at Ibiranu, and the chariot master bellowed at the men in turn.  It took most of the morning for any order to be achieved.

Only about twenty of the chariots – the ones of the heavier type, with wooden floors and with metal rims on the wheels – would be ridden when the army departed.  They would be at the head of the column.  The other chariots – the lighter, Egyptian type – would be carried on their drivers’ heads during the march, and only limbered to horses when the army deployed.  They were not durable enough, and were far too valuable, to be ridden as transport.  The light chariot drivers would follow on foot behind the heavy chariots, with the maryannu chariot warriors carrying their javelins and bows marching alongside them.

Next in line would be the khepetj, the militiamen of the city, who served as light infantry and would deploy as runners around the chariots in battle.  These men were lightly armed and often had little practice at war; placing them around the chariots and near the Arkil Markabti and the other nobles increased the chances that they would not break and run when the enemy was encountered.

The bowmen came next.  That is where I would have been, if I did not have other more important tasks to keep me busy.  The bowmen were militia also.  They were drawn from men who held higher shares, but were not among the professional warrior class.  Bows were expensive, and required some training to use well, so the poorest of the khepetj could not afford them.

Behind them came the regular infantry, the sabu nagib.  They carried crescent swords inscribed to Yarea or muib axes, and strapped long narrow-waisted shields to their backs.  Many of them wore armored corselets in battle – but they would not wear those to march, of course.  The heaviest infantry – the na’arun, the picked elite – marched here also, carrying their long spears.

There were fewer of the regulars with the expedition than there might have been.  Most of the sabu nagib were also the city’s guardsmen, and many stayed behind to protect the city walls – and the storehouses.  Most of those who would march with us were the sons of headmen from the villages, and mercenaries hired season-to-season.

And then, of course, the supply train brought up the rear.  The warriors, even the militia, mainly despised us.  Many of the bearers and the donkey-handlers were men who had been captured in battle in the past, and had their thumbs and big toes cut off before being ransomed; none of them would even fight again, and so they could not erase the shame of their previous capture with fresh exploits or bravery.  All they could do was carry spare javelins on their backs or feed and water the animals.  But without us, the proud maryannu and the na’arun would have been doomed as soon as they went a day’s march outside the city.  The Melek appreciated us, if none of the others did, and we satisfied ourselves with that.

It took so long to get the men assembled and into column that it was nearly noon when we began our march.  This subjected us to the worst heat of the day, but it could not be helped.  In any event, we only intended to go as far as the river on our first day’s march; our troops would be poor stock indeed if they could not manage such a distance regardless of the heat.

The people of the city had come out to see us off.  Old men and women and boys cheered us from the roadside when we finally set out.  The heat only slightly discouraged their hurrahs.  The old men returned to their work as soon as we had gone; the women stood and stared after us for as long as we could be seen; the boys ran alongside us until they were chased back to the city with harsh words.

The road west of Yarich follows an ancient dry riverbed up into the hills, but the road east – the road we were taking – runs over a flat plain to the river.  The plain to the right of the road is level for a short distance, but then begins to descend sharply to the salt sea.  The land near our city and watered by the canals from our springs is green and fertile, for as long as we provide it with even minimal care.  The land by the sea is encrusted with salt that gives way to scarlet sands.  The plain between that blasted waste and our green fields is of variable fertility, and is covered in sickly grass and patches of bush, and plagued with clouds of biting insects.  To the left of the road, the soil is healthier and better watered.  Many of our small villages dot the landscape – at least until the ground becomes broken and rises in crags to the northern heights.

I had chosen the army’s route, which took us off the road to the north.  Although the road ran to the best of the available river crossings, a quite adequate crossing was also available farther north.  That crossing, I believed, was less likely to be watched.  Since the habiru were not too brutish or too confident of their magic to employ spies, I thought it not unlikely that they would employ scouts as well.  It had not been difficult to convince the Melek of this during our discussions together.  Less than an hour after leaving the assembly field, the lead chariots turned off the road and headed across country.

The vegetation grew thicker as we approached the river.  The grass became greener; bushes became more plentiful; there was even the occasional tree.  There have been days in the river country when I have seen boar, and even once a lion.  This day, of course, the tremendous noise produced by the column frightened away even the rats.

Some give the river the name “Descender”.  Farther north it drops steeply over a very short distance, passing from the swamps to the sweet sea.  The river grows in strength as it falls, and its strong currents are dangerous even where the width of the river is modest.  The strong flows have cut steep banks in most places, adding to the difficulty of crossing in safety.  The few passable crossings appear where the river takes one of its wide bends across the plain opposite Yarich.  At these bends, the banks are much less high, and the current is slower.  Paths leadings to these fords are worn through the reeds on either shore.

We reached the ford I had chosen well before evening, but we did not attempt to cross.  Ibiranu advocated a rapid crossing; the Arkil Markabti did not wish to camp on the western shore, and wake to find the enemy holding the eastern shore against us.  But the Melek chose to camp where we were, despite the earliness of the hour.  He did not want to find himself caught between the enemy and the river tomorrow; and if the habiru marched up during the night, he welcomed the opportunity to hold the ford against them on the defensive.

We went into camp two hundred cubits from the riverbank.  Some of the first-share men and village headmen had tents; most of the common soldiery did not.  I had not arranged for a tent, but had blankets with my baggage, and a heavy cloak in my family pattern.  I arranged these as well as I could on the ground.  I chose to bed down with the caravan men and with the thumb-less ones, under the open sky.  I had more experience at this than most; many citizens were only rarely away from the city or its villages, while I had made sleeping on strange ground my vocation.  The men gathered dry reed-tops and brush from the fringes of the thick growth around the river, and at sunset we made fires, over which we shared twice-baked bread and beer.

After Shalim, he who is called the Dusk, had departed and the sun was fully down, quiet gradually crept over the camp.  The odd silence that can overtake encampments of armed men is always a great surprise.  One would think that so many men together would be as clamorous as a marketplace, in their separate conversations and with their boasts and disputes – but somehow quiet always reigns; enough for you to hear the crackling of each fire as it burns down to coals.

In the diminishing firelight I saw both Ibiranu and the Melek walking among the men, speaking with each small group briefly; one or two of the other first-share men did so as well.  That was good.  It warmed my heart with pride to see Yarich’s noble bulls show such care for the army.  I found myself wondering if they felt the same way about the care I exercised to protect the dignity of the caravan-men.

The air cooled as the night advanced.  Mist steamed off the river as Yarea ascended in his arc in the sky.  We burrowed into our cloaks and blankets and tried to sleep, but the day’s light march had not been tiring enough to burn off the heady excitement of the first day of our enterprise; we stared long, night-eyed, into the dark sky.

After a time, a far-off noise – like unearthly music – began just at the limit of hearing.  It was like a lyre, but not like a lyre.  It was like a lyre because the sound vibrated in the ear; it was not like a lyre because the notes were maintained for far too long, and there was something in them of metal and fire, and not just of gut and wood.  The noise grew louder slowly, almost imperceptibly.  At first you could almost dismiss it as imagination or as the whispering of the soft night winds; but gradually it became unmistakable.  I sat up on my blankets, wondering if I was in one of those dreams that begins in so close a transition from waking life that you believe you are still awake.  The reactions of my fire-mates, all of whom pricked up their ears and some of whom stood up in alarm, along with the similar growing unease of those near us in the camp, soon convinced me that the sound was real and that I was indeed awake.

A pinprick of fire appeared on the eastern horizon, beyond the river.  It was tiny, almost as small as a star, but it blazed fiery yellow and white.  Despite its small size, it was so bright that it hurt to look at it directly, and when you turned from it you could see that it cast a shadow.  It slowly grew larger, as the horrible sound grew louder.  When it had grown large enough to have a discernible shape, you could see that it was a column of light, like a steady and unflickering fire – or like the lightning that did not pass that we had seen weeks before.

I wondered if the cloud would also return, and fall upon the army like a landslide, to choke and bury us in black ash.  But the cloud did not come…the column of light just grew larger and larger, and the sound grew in intensity, until we had to screw shut our eyes and cover our ears with our palms.

The fiery column rolled over our position. It was like drowning in a sea of blinding white light.  My face began to tingle, as if it was burning in the sun.  A man near me threw his cloak over his head and began to scream in pain.  Pressure grew in my ears and began to pound in time with my heartbeat; I felt a liquid ooze out of my left ear, and I hoped it was not blood.

By shielding my eyes with my hand and turning my head, I was able to recover my sight a little.  Black shadows in the shape of men stumbled about, colliding with each other, tripping, falling.  One man had fallen into his own fire, which was a strangely cool and dark orange against the blistering white light.  His face shook as if he was screaming, but I could not hear him.

The air itself, heated by the light, began to burn in my throat and lungs.  I crouched down to the ground, and struggled to find cooler air to breathe.  Tears streamed down my face; the light somehow siphoned the moisture from my eyes.

Just when it became too painful to breathe, and just when I became convinced that my skin would burst into flame, the sound stopped and the light disappeared.  For a moment the darkness and silence was so complete that I thought that I had died – that I had died, and I was in the eternally blank and soundless darkness of the pit.  I mumbled to myself, and begged Mot for a mercy I knew would not be forthcoming.  Then the darkness began to dissolve back into shadows and shapes, and hearing began to return to my ears.  I had not been cast into the pit; the white light and the incredible sound had simply relented, and their removal had left me momentarily blinded and deafened.  I floundered like a man who falls deep into the sea and then is pulled back to the surface.

A man on the ground who had rolled to my feet while blinded and burning grabbed my leg with a four-fingered hand.  “What was it?” he asked, shaking his head.  “What could it be?”

“I don’t know,” I gasped.  The air was cooling, and I was taking deep, long breaths, testing my lungs.  “I don’t know.”

Suddenly we heard the sound of splashing water.  I thought at first that perhaps men had jumped into the river to try to escape the heat and light, but the river was too far from our camp for anyone caught in that terrible glare to reach; no men of ours were in the river’s waters.  The splashing noise increased, and men began to shout.  Was some new terror advancing upon us from the river?  Or, if the light had been some dreadful magic, would the habiru now fall upon us in its wake?

Some men turned away from the river, and ran to the west; some men turned towards the river, and ran to the east.  I was one of the latter, although I do not know how or why.  Some unknown courage or some heedless impulse in my chest moved my feet.  I ran over trampled reeds and into the river-mist.  I saw Ibiranu there, not far off, running forward to the riverbank and urging others to follow; I looked for the Melek, but did not see him.

The splashing grew louder.  Just as I reached the riverbank and joined the others there, men began to emerge out of the mist, sloshing their way across the ford.  First only a few were visible, but more and more came across behind them, waist-deep in the water.  The men on our side murmured and readied weapons.

I was glad that nothing worse than men approached us.  After the light and the sound, I expected some nightmare from beyond the world, or one of the great beasts from before time whose bones can sometimes be seen in the desert.  Men were easier to face.  But then I looked over my shoulder, and saw how few of our own men had run east, and how many had run west; and I shuddered.

Ibiranu betrayed no fear, but raised a crescent-shaped sword into the air over his head and laughed.  I had run forward without my bow, and had only a long knife.  I held it in one hand and grimly faced the advance of the men in the river, who had nearly reached the other side.

Then I laughed, too.  For as they drew close, I made out their faces.  And in the lead, covered in dust where the river’s waters had not splashed him and with streaks of mud running down his face, ran Bensakal, and no habiru.  Behind him, equally road-stained but still recognizable, were the boys – men – he had brought out with him from Yarich.  Further back were foreigners, Abishar’s people.  The prince himself was at the rear.

“Aheu!  Aheu!  Friends, friends!” I shouted, jumping into the water and waving my arms, running in front of the other men on the bank, who might not have sons among those crossing the river and who might not understand that they were not the enemy.  “My boy!  My boy!”

Bensakal strode out of the shallows and stopped before us, a blank expression on his face.

A few scant weeks leading his party in the hill-country had hardened him.  He looked thinner.  The fine features he had taken from his mother had grown even sharper, and had given him the face of a hawk.  When I embraced him, still repeating, “My boy!  My boy!” like an old woman again and again, it was like pressing my face against the rock of a desert cliff.

When my son was just a few summers old, if he had a bad dream I would pat his hair in the dark to chase away the creatures of his night-mind.  I would wipe the tears from his lamb’s face to soothe him, and to let him return to an untroubled sleep.  I suppose I had thought that meeting him there at the river would be like that.  I was mistaken – mistaken indeed.

“There is news!” he said, shouting a little like someone who has gone slightly deaf.  No doubt the sound had been even louder and more brutal on the other side of the Descender.  “There is news!”

As the men he led trudged up from the shallows, to meet fathers and friends who were slowly making their way to the riverbank, Bensakal fell in between Ibiranu and myself and walked back to the camp in search of the Melek.

We found him sitting on a stool outside his tent, while his valet gently washed a burned and sand-encrusted foot with clean water.

Apparently he had been sleeping when the light had come.  When he rushed from his tent to see what was happening, he had been blinded like the rest when he emerged from its dark folds, and had stumbled into the coals of his own fire like so many others.  The burn was not severe, but it had gotten very dirty; sand had worked its way into his blisters as he had hobbled around the camp, trying to rally men down to the river after the light had departed.  I hurt for him and his injury – but I was pleased, at least, that he had not run away.

“Lord,” Bensakal said roughly, “They come.”

“Indeed,” he replied, and he winced a little as more water was poured over his wound.  “I thought that they were already here, when I heard you approaching.”

“The molten spear leads them when they march at night.  They follow it at a distance, right at the limit of sight and hearing.”

“Based on what we just saw and heard,” Ibiranu interjected, “…That might be quite far indeed.”

“Less far than you’d think,” Bensakal replied.  I noted that Abishar stayed silent, and deferred to my son’s report.  So soon?  “We have never been this close before.  The spear passed right over us.  Its power falls off quickly, as your distance from it grows.  A thousand more cubits away, and it would have been just a beacon to your eyes – an extraordinary one, but not destructive.”

The Melek got right to the heart of it: “How many are they?”

“More than you have here.”  He gestured to the camp, and then waved one arm in a long arc that took in the eastern horizon.  “They split into ten or more small groups to sweep up the villages of Gil’al, to try to hunt down and butcher every last man – but now they are gathering together again.  They will bring six or seven times your force.”

“Who counted our men for you?” the Melek asked, critically.  He screwed his face up into a caricature of perspicacity.  It helped him to not cry out as the valet wrapped a dressing on his foot.

“We marked you the entire way from Yarich.  We had to move fast to be able to beat the habiru to the river crossing.  I feared that we might get cut off before we could meet you here.”

If no one else would say the obvious, I would.  “Now that the scouting party is recovered, lord, we can withdraw.”

Everyone stared at me in response.  No one said a word.

I was not discouraged.  “A night march would not be advisable, of course.  But if we begin to get the men into order as soon as there is any light, even before the sunrise, we would be back at the city by the afternoon.”

Ibiranu muttered something under his breath and shook his head.  From the look on his face I gathered that I did not want to hear his words.

“Withdraw?”  The Melek was aghast.  He looked around to see if anyone supported my suggestion.  “We hold the river crossing!  The gods have given us a chance to hold them here, despite their numbers – the river makes each of our men count for ten!”

I refrained from pointing out that the path our march had taken had been my counsel, and not a gift of the gods.  “Great One, those men that count for ten were very nearly just burned up like a handful of sticks.  If that is what El has wrought for these sorcerers merely to light their way, what will the god do for them in battle?”

“Yahweh,” Abishar interjected.  His voice was drained of all life, like one whose exhaustion has taken him past the end of all hope.  If he had found revenge during his return to Gil’al, it had given him nothing.  “They follow Yahweh, not El.”

This was odd – as all that we had heard or seen to date, since word of the sorcerer first reached us, was odd.  Yahweh was one of the seventy divine children of El, but was of no great distinction.  Confusing El and Yahweh was like confusing Egypt with Yarich.

“Sometimes the ones we catch speak of El, and sometimes of Yahweh,” Bensakal added.  “The prisoners are often as confused as we are about the god-politics of it all.”

“If the sorcerer taught that all gods are mere aspects of El, it may not matter to them what name they use,” the Melek said.  This was an astute observation.  Perhaps they used the names of the gods as mere poetic finery for their new El to wear.  If so, the Melek probably found it easy enough to understand them.

“I have never seen a god of any name known to us produce a wonder such as we saw tonight, Great One.  With all respect.”  I bowed low.  I had just blasphemed, albeit indirectly.  A sneer of disdain at every claim to power made by our priests was hidden deep within my words, but not so deep that a clever man - like my lord – or one sensitive to slights – like my lord – might not see it.

He turned his face away from me without comment, and gave his attention back to Bensakal.  “So you have caught them?  You could fight them, like men?  You might have had the foresight to bring one of them before me.”

“Lord, we moved too quickly to bring along even a single prisoner,” Bensakal explained.  “And had you seen any of the villages of Gil’al I have visited…” In the background, Abishar spat.  “…You would understand why we let none of those we captured live, but let them dance their way into the pit to the music of their own screams instead.  But yes, they can be caught, and fought, and killed.  Although we never approached their main formations, and took only foragers and stragglers.”

“If they’re men who can be killed, then we’ll see if they are strong enough to force the river crossing,” the Melek decided and declared.  “And if they are, we’ll harry them across the plain.”  He stood up, and tested his foot.  He winced in discomfort, but was able to stand.  He nodded to Ibiranu, and those muru-u who had come close enough to hear him.  “I will have your dispositions in the morning.”

Mad.  They had to be mad.

It had not been the power of their god that had swept over us the night before; it had been their insanity.  Madness ran before them like a wave, and we had been caught up in it.

At dawn we had deployed on our shore of the river.  The heavy infantry held the center, and the light troops protected their flanks.  The bowmen stood behind the line.  When the enemy crossed, they would be in bow range while bogged down in the river.  I had left the caravan-men behind to guard the donkeys and the camp, and had taken a place in one of the four units of twenty bowmen.

Our chariots were of little use.  They were an open field weapon – a tool for a battle of maneuver, and not for holding a fixed position behind a defendable barrier.  They deployed behind the bowmen.  If the crossing were forced, they would harass the enemy’s front while the infantry withdrew and regrouped back on the plain.

All in all, it was a good use of our terrain advantage.  Not a very inventive battle plan – but invention was not really called for here.  The simplicity of the plan lent the men confidence, and that was good enough.

But it was a plan for a battle against sane men.  Its merits were less obvious against the lunatics who now approached.

The main body of the enemy hung back.  Bensakal had scouted them well; I estimated that they fielded five times the number of our men.  They advanced in no good order, in a single large undifferentiated mass.  Their equipment varied widely, ranging from clubs and small knives all the way up to respectable sickle swords and corselets that would not have been out of place among our sabu nagib.  Their clothing was a jumble, as well: some wore patterned kilts and tunics very much like those worn by the men of Yarich and her western neighbors; some wore the felts and skins of the goat-men; there were even some who looked like Egyptians from the delta.  All in all, a motley group.  They were more like a bandit gang swollen to gigantic proportions than an army.

But it was not the lack of discipline or the tactical heedlessness of their advance that marked them as insane; it was their comical and suicidal advance guard.  More than a thousand cubits ahead of the main force, a small group of men came forward bearing a burden on two golden poles.  What the burden was could not be seen; it was covered with a large curtain woven of blue, purple and scarlet yarn.  I imagined that they bore the image of their god; the Egyptians and the men of the country of the two rivers often will transport their gods from place to place or from city to city in this manner.  The men themselves wore rich vestments of similar multicolored cloth, with breastplates of gold chain and gold bells jingling from their hems.  I judged them to be the priests entrusted with the image.  Other richly appointed men, not in vestments but finery that was likely looted from the men of Gil’al, marched around them.  Some of these wore arms, but none bore them.

It was not unusual to carry the image of a god at the head of an armed column.  That was not the custom in Yarich, but I knew of many cities whose kings would have done the same.  But it was unusual to place one’s priests and one’s god so far ahead of the army that they could not be protected.  Once the enemy was sighted, the proper place for priests was behind the main line or in a strong camp where they could be protected along with their finery and the burden they bore.  But these priests did not seek safety, even though they plainly could see our men.  Instead, while their army stopped and watched, the priests carried their burden all the way to the ford, and prepared to enter the river with it.

Our men were amazed.  We had spent the morning in trepidation, anticipating an attack from a force many times the size of our own.  But now that force had stopped its march without engaging us, and had sent forward to fall under our bows its priests, its wealthiest men, and a great treasure.

Bensakal had taken a place by me.  He laughed now, and I was happy to hear the sound of his laughter.  For a moment he was a brash boy again, and not the hawk I had met the night before.  “I imagine even a bow drawn across your belly can pierce those pretty breastplates,” he joked, and then he winked at me.

I laughed with him.  But there was a hollow point of doubt in my heart.  I kept it hidden, and slapped him on the shoulder in a fatherly way; I did not want to discourage his good humor.  But after all that had transpired, I had to wonder: What are they doing? What are they counting on?

The priests reached the water.  They paused for a moment, while those who marched with them arranged themselves in a wedge behind the men holding the golden poles.

“They’ll never get that across,” Bensakal scoffed.  “The current’s too strong, even here at the ford.”

I smiled.  He’d crossed the Descender twice without his father holding his hand, and so now naturally he was an expert.

“Maybe it floats,” I replied.

A commotion among the chariots indicated that either the Melek or the Arkil Markabti was issuing orders.  Word reached us speedily by runner: we were commanded to allow the men who advanced to enter the river, and to commit to the crossing; we were then to shred them into pieces with our arrows.

The men became eager as hounds.  Some bounced from foot to foot.  Others craned their necks to look down the gentle slope to the river below, to judge the progress of the priests.  Many a tense grip settled on its bow.

The priests took their first steps into the river.  I lamented that the mud would ruin their soft purple slippers, pressed with gold.

The front lines of the sabu nagib began to murmur.  I could still see the priests; the current did not wash either them or their burden away.  After a few moments, I could see why:

The river was drying up.

At first I thought it was a trick of the light of the sun rising over the mountain – but it was no mirage.  The flow of water slowed to a trickle, as if a giant boulder had been cast into the river upstream.  The water level dropped until the riverbed was exposed, leaving behind a morass of shallow pools, and sand, and mud.  The priests did not become mired in the muck as they walked forward, though; a path across the bed, that began right where they entered the river and came straight to our position, somehow turned firm and dry to support them.

Our men stood stupefied and amazed.  Arms at our sides, we watched as the bizarre assemblage advanced towards us.  Our commanders were not so stunned as to be asleep, though; the muru-u shouted us back into action. “Your bows!  Your bows!” they shouted.  “Slay the magicians and the river will return!”

I was doubtful – but I notched an arrow and drew my bow back nonetheless.  Bensakal, next to me, did the same.  He drew his bow back farther than I could, now.  “Shoot straight,” I said to him.  “But be ready to avoid the hooves of the horses behind us if this doesn’t work.”

“Volley!  Volley!” came the cry of the muru-u, and eighty arrows flew in high arcs into the air.  We had the range, even though it was our first attempt.  The arrows curved down perfectly onto the lightly protected priests.  But just as the first arrows should have struck home, just as flesh should have been torn and scored and the priests and their burden cast down, the arrows were suddenly deflected away.  They flew wildly in all directions, spinning off at every angle other than the one that would have let them find their targets.  It was as if a giant hand had placed in front of our enemies a shield that could not be seen.

The bowmen muttered to each other, but before the muttering could turn into dismay, the muru-u called out, “Again!  Again!  Volley!  Volley!”  I focused on the task of dispatching my second arrow, and not on the sorcery I had just seen.  The others near me did likewise.  I made sure to adjust my range to account for the continued advance of the priests across the river bed, and –

A second flight of arrows sought out our enemies.  There was a moment of doubt – perhaps this time they would strike home? – but the result was the same.  The arrows all bounced away, to land in the reeds and the mire.  This time you could ever hear a ringing sound, like a great copper gong, as the arrows were knocked away from their targets.

I turned to look at Bensakal.  His face was white, and cut with dark shadows.  “This…” he deadpanned through his fear, “…is a really big problem.”

Some of those in my unit began to drift backwards from their positions – one step, two steps, a third.  They were ready to bolt; I could tell.  I certainly was prepared to accompany them.  There was no point in bearing a bow to face enemies who were shielded from our arrows by their god.

Again our commanders intervened.  The maryannu drove their chariots up on to our right flank.  They brought forward their runners with them.  The surprise of seeing not a rout, but an advance, in the face of this incomprehensible sorcery rallied us.  I know that for me, my feet stilled themselves only because of the curiosity of my eyes.

I saw Ibiranu leap from his chariot, waving a javelin.  He ran to the front and urged the runners forward.  They followed him out on to the riverbed without hesitation.  They were going to attack the priests on foot.  I imagined that they thought that spears and swords might be harder to deflect by sorcery than arrows had been.

We were better led than I would have judged before the engagement.  To hold the army in place as they had, and to have this kind of courage –

I held my breath for the splendid Ibiranu, and for Yarich.

Bensakal stepped forward, leaving our unit entirely and entering the space between the bowmen and the main line.  The advance of the light infantry stirred in his boy’s heart a desire to follow.  He was not alone in feeling this; others started to walk up behind him.  I shouted to them to remain in place.  A mad advance would be just as dangerous for us as a mad retreat.  A muru-u chased them back to their places with a club.

Ibiranu was a swift runner, and was many ells head of the rest of our fighters as they neared the priests.  So powerful was his stride that the mud did not slow him.  He let out a savage and exultant cry as he aimed a slashing blow at the head of the nearest enemy.  The habiru had no weapon drawn, no shield, no armor I could see – but despite his helplessness, he did not flinch.  He did not show the least concern, despite the attack that screamed down upon him; neither did any of his fellows.

Just as Ibiranu reached the priest, just as the crescent sword swept into the air to hack his life away, the priests’ burden flashed with a golden light.  It flashed brighter than the terrible beacon of the night before, brighter than the sun; brighter than a score of suns.  A tongue of flame leaped out from under its curtains and lashed over Ibiranu.

The flame caught him and held him fast.  It stopped his charge, and dropped him to his knees.  He dropped his sword and screamed in agony.  The men behind him stopped dead in their tracks, fascinated and terrified, as we all were.  Ibiranu flailed his arms to try to escape the cocoon of fire that surrounded him, but it matched his movements and refused to be beaten out or extinguished.  It burned off his clothes, and even his armor.  It seared his flesh away.  His handsome features blackened and crumbled, exposing his skull and his bones.

The khepetj runners who had charged with Ibiranu stood agape in horror at his fate.  The object flashed again, and more tongues of flame leaped out and encased them all.  They writhed in a terrible dance; dozens of burning skeletons, disintegrating into dust.  Their screams echoed from the mud at their burning feet up to the empty and pitiless morning sky.

Those screams broke the spell of fascination that had held us stationary.  The army broke and turned to run, almost as one man.  Our commanders could not have stopped it again and did not try.  Astarte herself could not have held our men to their positions.  There is a voice of loyalty and shame in each man’s heart, that pleads with him to stand and fight for the men of his city; but flame and death and a dry riverbed spoke louder than that voice ever could.  Terrified men cast down unused and unblooded weapons and streamed back over the plain.

Bensakal did not immediately run, even though the army had melted around us.  He stood as still as a statue in the tumult, with tears streaming down his face.  Whatever he had thought the morning would bring, he had not been ready for this horror, this defeat at a stroke, this humiliation.  I shook him, roughly, and shouted in his ear.

“The camp!” I shouted.  “The beasts!  We must save the beasts!”

He had walked with me on enough caravan journeys for this appeal to cut through his despair.  A call to save the beasts will quicken the heart of a caravan-man like a warning of fire quickens the heart of a sailor.  He staggered a little, but then he met my eyes, and nodded – and then we ran.

The camp was an oasis of calm.  It was just far enough away from the river for the events there to have been obscured from view.  It had been obvious to the caravan-men that some disaster had befallen us, but the terrifying nature of the weapon of the habiru could not be discerned fully at this distance.  The spirits of the men in the camp were, as a result, not as crushed as those of soldiers had been.  Then again, these were men who had been through the shame of capture and survived it once already; their infirmities made it impossible for them to fight, but their experience made them difficult to rattle.  One or two men ran up to us as we approached, demanding news and orders, but most of them were already pulling up the lead-ropes of the donkeys from their pitons and getting the beasts into lines.

Turning back, I could still see the riverbed well enough to see that the priests had not advanced any further.  They stood in the middle of the dry path, mere steps from the charred bones of Ibiranu and his men; they had stopped carrying their burden forward.  That was a relief.  If they had followed on our heels with their dreadful weapon – was it the mouth of their god, belching out breath of fire from within his curtained box? – we would have had no hope.  But they had stopped, and so we had a chance.

The main body of the enemy force was now moving towards the river behind them.  They intended to cross on the dry path while the priests held back the river with their god’s magic.  They marched, and did not charge, or launch any pursuit; I calculated that we would have enough time to get away.

To the west, unbelievably, small groups of our men were re-forming their lines.  I was shocked that there was any man who was not still running as fast as he could.  If I had not had the supply train and Bensakal to worry over, there was nothing that could have stopped my feet between here and Yarich.  As we frantically drove the donkeys west, I saw what had stopped them: the chariot of the Melek bore down upon those who had run the farthest, and our lord pored arrow after arrow into their backs.  His chariot circled around, again and again, forcing the routed men to turn.  The sheep feared the wolves, but they feared the anger of their shepherd too; enough for them to allow themselves to be rallied once again.

I had my own sheep.

“Don’t stop!  Keep going!” I shouted.  “Keep right on until you can count the city roofs!”  I slapped at the hindquarters of the donkey nearest to me with the flat of my bow.

The caravan-men obeyed with enthusiasm.  They drove the beasts headlong through the re-forming spear lines, and headed west in a cloud of dust from kicking hooves.  I ran towards the chariot of the Melek, placing myself between them and him.

When he got closer, I knew why so many men had returned to the lines, rather than continue their flight across the plain.  He was an avatar of madness and rage.  All that I lamented about him as a ruler served him well here: his vanity, now turned into a ferocious indignation against any who would abandon him; his ludicrous pretense to a divinity like Pharaoh’s, which now kept him from quivering in terror before the power of another god; his jester’s love of performance and histrionics, which now beamed his hammy grandiloquence across the battlefield to reach the eyes and hearts of his broken soldiery.  Even his fat features served him now: sweat and cosmetics poured down his bloated and livid face, making him look like nothing less than a demon.  I knew how he had rallied the men, because he rallied me, too.

“If they run, they die!” he bellowed, pointing after the caravan-men with his bow.  “If they run, they die!  I’ll kill them myself!”  He beat his chest with his free hand.  “Myself!”

I held up my arms, palms out in supplication.  “Great One, the fault is mine!  Our camp was set too close!  Too close!  I have ordered them back two thousand cubits, no more!” I lied.  By the time my lie was discovered, the men and beasts would be safe.  If we somehow won the field, I would suffer for my deception – but that was a problem for later in the day.

My lie worked, and satisfied him.  “A new line here – “   He pointed to the na’arun around us.  They were the best men, and also the most encumbered, and so they had been the easiest to gather.  “Spears and swords!  Here!  When the magicians bring their infernal device forward, chariots around their flank to strike at their main column behind!”

At least he was not planning another charge against the priests.  He deferred that much to their obvious power.  It was to be hit-and-run, against the enemy’s flank, on the pivot of a fixed position.  It was the most basic tactic possible, but one with centuries of proof behind it.

If the enemy had pressed us, they could have shattered us again quite easily.  But they did not.  They were quite lackadaisical about it, in fact.  We watched them as the Melek continued to collect whatever men he could, and arranged us according to his new battle-plan.  They took their time moving all of their men across the river, when the aggressive advance of even a portion of their force would have broken us again with little effort.  As their men reached the western bank of the river, they busied themselves with prayer, and did not trouble themselves with us.  I suppose if I owed as much to god-magic as they did, I would have done the same.

As the morning rolled on, more and more of our men mastered themselves and rejoined our lines.  They shuffled back in one’s and two’s, wearing their disgrace on their faces.  Everyone had run, but those who came back last still felt unmanned before those who had come back first.  The greeting of a friend or brother was usually enough to wash their shame away.  But even for those who could not let go of their humiliation, and who blushed and hung their heads before their fellows, it could have been worse; they could have been lying dead in the grass with an arrow in their back.

Just as noon put the sun directly above our heads and cut our shadows down to strips, the habiru began to advance again.  We were as ready for them as we were ever going to be.  As many men as could be gathered back into position stood across their line of advance, a double row of spears and axes.  About half of our original number at dawn were there now at noon; the rest had scattered so far to the west that not even the Melek’s rage had sufficed to track them down.  We still had all the chariots, at least.  As long as their lord drew breath, the maryannu would not leave him.  The chariots took a position far out on the right flank, and back a hundred paces.

Bensakal and I deployed with them.  Our bows were slung on our backs, and we carried long knives.  So many of the light infantry had been burned in the conflagration that met Ibiranu’s charge that many bowmen had to be pressed into service as chariot runners, and we were among them.  Abishar was there as well, along with those few of his people who had been salvaged from the rout.  It was a very small number; the Amuru had taken their fill of the invaders’ magic, I supposed.  He sought out my son and they clasped hands, but did not greet each other or speak.  I did not know what they had seen together in the hills, but I knew that if the prince ran with the chariots that Bensakal would not hang back.

The habiru advanced across the plain in the same manner as they had approached the river.  The priests – their finery now a bit spattered with the mud of the riverbed – marched slowly in front, bearing their frightful baggage.  The rest of their force stood at rest until the priests had moved away, and then followed behind at a distance.  They were either bound and determined to make the Melek look like an excellent tactician – or they were so confident that they did not care what we did, or what plan we devised.

As the priests slowly came closer, the men in our holding force shuffled and grew nervous.  The demonic fire at the priests’ command had impressed itself on every man’s mind.  What the range of their magic was no one knew, of course; it was questionable how willing the infantry would be to stand in place and find out.

On the right, our chariots deployed in a long line, with wide spaces between each vehicle.  We runners filled those spaces.  There was little danger of being struck or run over by one of our own machines; if a chariot swerved to your side, all you had to do to avoid it was stop running and let its momentum carry it past you.  The chariots would be driven to within bow range of the enemy, at a point well to the rear of the priests and their weapon.  After the warriors launched a volley of arrows, the driver would swing their chariots around to the right, changing face into a column to run down to the river.  There we would turn around and make a new run that reversed the course of our first pass.

I had to run hard to keep up as the chariots rumbled towards the enemy.  My knees hurt – I had run across this field too many times today already – but the sound of two hundred wheels and two hundred horses was as loud as thunder, and once it started it called you forward whether you willed it or not.  The ground shook and my back ached and dust swirled into my eyes, but I ran and did not stop.

The heavy chariots were in the center, with the Melek out in front.  His team of horses – Shakhuri, and another great black horse that was almost as fine – had not been exhausted by their pursuit of our own men, and they galloped forward madly.  They had to be restrained lest they shake their crew to pieces.  As we drew close enough to the habiru to make out individual faces, the Melek shouted loudly enough to be heard even above the clamor of the hoof-beats, and bent his bow –

A sound like every wasp ever hatched taking enraged flight in a single swarm washed over us and swallowed the sound of the chariots.  A cloud of glittering hornets, as brilliant as gems or stars, manifested itself over the heads of our enemies and flew towards us faster than any hawk could dive.

– and his arrow took one of the habiru warriors through the neck, and cut him down.

One moment of glory, and then the fall.

The swarm of insects reached us, riding a wave of sound that made the screech of the beacon the night before seem like the sigh of a maiden.  I saw that they were not hornets at all, but some kind of living creatures made of light.  The whining buzz they emitted grew even louder as they hovered over our heads, and I saw men whose ears burst and flowed red before they collapsed to the ground.  I lunged to tackle Bensakal, and toppled us both into the grass.

“Stay down!” I frantically screamed, but since I could not hear myself over the sound of these fantastic insects I doubted that he could hear me.

The hornets separated into many small swarms, and settled on the horses and the chariots and their crews.  And it was as if each small point of living light had its own savage mouth, and each of them set to devour beast and cart and man.

The horse-teams went down almost immediately, as thousands of small bites tore away hair, and skin, and flesh.  It was like watching as a dead carcass left exposed to the air was devoured by scavenging birds and worms – but at incredible speed, so that the decay of a fortnight or a month took place in mere seconds.

The men fared no better.  Their armor bought them a moment or two of more life than that left to the horses, but no more.  They shuddered in agony at each tiny bite.  Blood from thousands of small wounds rained on to the chariots and the yoke-shafts, before the chariots themselves were gnawed into fragments and then into sawdust.  I saw one man devoured down even through his ribs, so that his heart and his gut were exposed; these were then consumed in turn, bursting in an explosion of bile and blood and phlegm.

Abishar appeared beside us, and dragged us to our feet, mouthing a shout that did not contain words and did not need any.  I felt the skin on the back of my neck tear away, and thought:

They have me.

But it was only Abishar’s great paw, pushing me to run with such strength that it rent my skin.  My feet tied up under me in my panic and haste, and I went down.  Abishar lifted my left arm, and Bensakal appeared beside me and lifted my right – and we ran, ran as if the pit itself was opening behind us.

The plain was flat and mainly featureless, but there was a slight fold of the earth a long sprint away from us.  We made for that.  The light from the deadly insects cast our shadows out long in front of us, even in the noon sun.  Their sound was so loud that I could not tell if it was coming closer or moving further away; I only knew that I expected death at any moment.  I ran until my lungs shrunk to peas and my legs turned to stone.  Off on our right I could see that another swarm had attacked the infantry; it moved so fast that those poor wretches never even had a chance to run as we had.  Men tried to stagger to safety as they turned into skeletons dressed in rags of flesh.  Some raised their hands to the sky to beg for mercy, but the only mercy we received on that field was that we could not hear any screams.

We reached the top of the small hillock – it was almost too meager to deserve the name.  I dove down behind it, struggling to draw breath into lungs that had been pushed too far.  Bensakal landed beside me.  I threw myself on top of him.  If the creatures of light found us here, I wanted them to devour me first; any fragment of life that I could buy for him, I would buy.

Abishar did not stop with us, but kept running.  Since he was no longer holding the arm of a fat old fool, he lengthened his stride and gained so much speed that he very nearly flew.  It did him no good.  A wedge-shaped formation of the insects passed right over me, so close that I could almost smell the blood on their lips.  It missed us entirely – although how such a simple ruse deceived the minions of a god I cannot say – and caught up to the prince in a twinkling.  He must have seen them in the corner of his eye at the last moment; he spun around to hack at them fruitlessly with his knife, and fell backwards over his own feet.  They took the hand with the knife first, chewing to pieces even the bronze blade; they took his eyes next, as Bensakal beneath me squirmed to rise and go to the aid of his friend.  It was over far too quickly for him to have any chance to succeed.  By the time he threw me off, there was nothing left of Abishar but shards of bone and a half-eaten heart and liver.

My mind raced.  Off to the right, the creatures still gnawed upon our infantry at their leisure.  To our left, battalions from the first swarm chased down the few chariots that had not caught in their initial attack and that now fled to the south and southwest.  Between the swarms was a gap where you could still see grass and blue sky, and not flying crystal drenched in gore or dying men whose flesh was blistered and peeled away.  I seized my son’s hand, sprang to my feet, and ran for that gap.

I did not know how far we would need to run.  Perhaps there was no distance we could go that would be sufficient, and no safety to reach anywhere; perhaps the hornets of light would pursue us wherever we went, and hunt down every last man who had contested the river crossing or had stood on the plain to bar the advance of the habiru.  It didn’t matter.  I ran for whatever life was left for me, and pulled my son along for whatever life was left for him.

The ground rumbled and a shudder from it vibrated up through my legs.  One of the last surviving heavy chariots, also racing for the gap, had bounced over the hillock behind which we had hidden and had tumbled out of control.  It hurtled towards us on one wheel.  When the horses went down, the yoke-shaft spiked itself into the turf, and snapped in two.  The car rolled over on its side and skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust.  The driver was thrown free, and hit the earth at a neck-breaking angle.  The warrior, tied to the car’s fighting platform, hung down limply from the wooden frame by leather cords.

It was the Melek.

I turned around.  May I be damned for it for all time, may filth forever be my inheritance – I turned around.  What made me go back for him?  Whatever foul demon it was has never been given a name.  The demon disguised himself as fellow-feeling, as love of the city, as piety, as friendship – but I know it was a demon; I know it from his works.

I ran back to the overturned car, dodging kicks from screaming horses.  The Melek was dazed; his eyes had rolled back to the whites.  I shook him, and squeezed a fat chunk of his face in my hand.  Bensakal hacked at the leather cords with his knife.

Why did he still have his knife?  Why had he not thrown it behind him as he fled the field, as I had?  The demon.  Why had he seen me turn?  Why had he followed me, and not continued to run?  The demon.

The Melek fell free of the cut straps, and returned to the waking world when his face scraped against the ground.  We pulled him up, to balance on unsteady feet –

But it was too late.

The hornets fell upon us.

They took the chariot car first.  The pressed gold on its frame was like honey to their limitless appetite.  Shakhuri went into their maw next, followed by his team-mate; their vibrant beauty and strength became in mere moments no more than offal and carrion.

The time to run had gone.  I dropped to my knees, and wondered if there would be much pain.  Without my support, the Melek collapsed back into the dirt, senseless once again.  Lucky in death as he had been in birth, without awareness he would feel nothing as they consumed him.

Bensakal did not kneel or fall.  He kept his knees straight, and even tried to square his shoulders in defiance as the hornets bore down.  He did not succeed; he flinched, despite himself, and shielded himself with his right arm.  He finally dropped the knife he had not abandoned all through the rout.  I wanted to pull him down to the ground beside me, so that we would disappear into oblivion together, but my arms and legs had gone limp and would not obey me.  Paralyzed, I watched my son’s arm dissolve into bloody mist in the air, as the hornets consumed it; my throat unable to scream, my eyes unable to shut.

All at once, the light from the insects winked out.  Like a torch thrown into a water barrel, one moment the light was there, and the next it was extinguished.  The hornets disappeared and were gone.  Their buzzing and whining ceased as well, replaced by groans from the Melek and sobs from Bensakal.

I scrambled to my son, ignoring the mystery of the departure of the hornets.  Blood pumped out of the stump of his arm and clotted in the dirt.  I picked up one of the scraps of leather cord that had fallen from the chariot frame, and tried to tie it as a tourniquet on what was left of his limb.  The pride and defiance of mere moments ago had vanished from his face, leaving behind nothing but pain.  He screamed and cried and begged, and his voice cracked like a young boy’s.

The bleeding slowed somewhat under the tourniquet, and went from a gushing to a trickle leaking out in heart-beat time.  I risked a look away to steal a glance back towards the habiru.  They again made no attempt at pursuit – although it must be said that this time they may not have seen any enemy left for them to pursue.  Our army was simply gone.  Where there had been men and horses and chariots there was now nothing but sticky red blotches drying on the grass, and strewn gear, and discarded arms.

Not that pursuit would have made any difference.  It would not have mattered to me if every man among them had marked me as the last to oppose them and had stormed across the field for my head.  All desire I had to run was gone.  There was no way that I was going to leave Bensakal.  The question did not arise; they gave me time, and I took it.

Bensakal’s face turned white.  He whimpered, and tears leaked out from eyelids he kept squeezed shut.  I embraced him, and kissed his face, and tried to comfort him.  In the end he had needed his father to soothe away his fears, after all.

I lifted him, just a little, to test if I would be able to carry him away.  He cried out in agony as I did so, and the tied leather cord shifted and threatened to give way.  I abandoned the attempt.

He never opened his eyes.  He never gave me one last look of devotion or kinship; never left me with some profound truth; never delivered a last brave witticism.  He simply wept; an injured and confused child.  His heart beat beneath mine for a little while longer, and then he departed and traveled over the fated track that is assigned to us all.

SEVEN

The bows of the mighty are broken;

They that stumbled are girded with strength.

–         Samuel 2:4

I pulled off the Melek’s helmet and held him by the hair.  I slapped his face with my open hand, again and again, and slammed his head into the ground.

The deadly hornets did not return.  The habiru did not come.  Behind my back, they left the field and returned to the riverbank, where they went into camp.  I watched them for a while, when my arms grew tired.  I knew that they saw me, and that they did not care.

When I was done watching them, I slapped my lord’s fat face some more.

Why had the hornets let me live?  Had the habiru El, or El/Yahweh, sought only to destroy our army?  Once that was done, had his withdrawn his minions to their unearthly hive?  I could not say.  I knew only that I lived, and that Bensakal could have survived as well – had we avoided the creatures of light for even just a few more moments.  Had we not turned back, we would have been on our way back to Yarich together even now.  Had the Melek died during his charge, and not escaped, Bensakal would have lived.  Had the hornets reached the chariot before we did, we would not have been ensnared by the hope that we could rescue our lord; and, again, Bensakal would have survived.  The thousand small turns of chance that might have kept my son alive repeated themselves over and over in my mind, like songs that are sung through to the end but then begin again.

The Melek awoke beneath my blows.  He gasped for breath.  I considered throttling that breath out of him before he fully recovered himself – but then decided to release him.

He hacked and coughed and spat blood from a ruined face.  Abrasions from the crash of the chariot and his fall from the car were overlaid by bruises from the beating I had administered to him.  He no longer resembled a demon; he now looked like a week-old corpse.

“Not the tree!  No tree!” he rasped, and he threw his arms around my knees.  “Not that.”

This puzzled me for only a moment before I remembered Abishar’s tale.  His father had been captured by the habiru and impaled on a tree to serve as a battle-standard.

I looked down at the figure cringing at my feet, and my contempt was so great that I almost laughed.  No doubt this part of the prince’s story had made a strong impression on him, and he feared this fate for himself.  Quite wisely, given our predicament.

“Yes!” I snarled at him.  “The tree!  Unless you help me.”

“Of course!”  He spat out a mouthful of dark red saliva.  “My friend, my friend.  Sakal.  Sakal!”  He grasped my hands.  “You stayed with me.  You shook me awake.  You saved me!  More loyal than any, braver than all!  Of course I will help you – anything, anything.”

I stared at him, uncomprehending.  It took me a moment to understand that he did not realize I had been beating him in a rage while he lay helpless; he thought I had been desperately trying to rescue him, and to help him regain consciousness.  “Can you stand?” I asked him, brusquely.

He gingerly tested his burned foot.  It had been dressed well enough to allow him to stand in his chariot, and he could put weight on it and walk on it without pain, for the moment.  “I can.”

“Then you must help me carry Bensakal’s body back to Yarich,” I declared.

“Wh-what?” he stuttered.  He had not expected that.  “But – the enemy.  We’ve got to get out of – “

“Shut up!” I cut him off in the most direct way possible: I grabbed him by the throat.  “Listen to me, Adu-na…” I threatened.  His eyes went wide a little, in shock that I used the name of his boyhood, the name I had called him when we ran on the streets of Yarich together as children.  I believe that the full gravity of his situation only struck him in that moment; fire and divine anger and utter defeat had not penetrated his mind as much as my simple refusal to employ his title did.  “…I have served you my entire life, since the day your father died.  But I am not leaving Bensakal here.”  I released him, and stepped away to pick up my son’s knife from the ground.  “And if you do not help me, I will cut you into pieces so small that not even the habiru god will find them.  You will escape the tree, but I assure you that you will not like it much.”

It was an easy decision for him.

We used the wreckage of the chariots and scraps of clothing from the dead to fashion a travois.  We carried Bensakal to it on our arms.  If in the course of doing so we became stained with his blood and waste, it did not matter.  Not to me.  If it mattered to the Melek, he did not dare to say so.

The sun blazed down on our heads as we turned and walked back towards Yarich, dragging the travois behind us.  I marveled at the height of the sun over our heads; how could it be only an hour after mid-day?  The morning seemed a lifetime ago.

My lord wept and cursed.  He was grateful to be alive, and grateful that he had not fallen into the hands of the habiru and did not seem likely to so fall today; but he was ruined, and knew it.

I wished he would keep silent.  He had lost an army, but I had lost a son.  I would have traded places with him gladly.  But even with my loss literally weighing down his arms, he could think only of his own.

“They will have shut the gates against us by now,” he sighed.  “Our reward for this walk will be a stone wall.  They will drive us off like beggars, or bandits.”

“I will worry about our reception in Yarich,” I panted, “…when I receive it.”

We came across dead men in ones and twos.  Some bore wounds from the terrible hornets; they had run as far as their waning lives took them and then expired in the grass alone.  Others bore no wounds that I saw.  In the worst defeats, that happens to some: fear and despair strike them down like arrows; hearts burst from within.

My own heart was in danger of this fate.  Grief weakened it and left it vulnerable.  After a time, I fell into a stupor, the trap of my own thoughts.  The Melek droned on in his litany of woe, but I heard nothing and understood nothing except the sun on my head and the weight on my back, and the dry wind that began to come up from the south.

We stopped often.  We had no water, and our tongues hung out from our exertions.  The dressing on my lord’s injured foot tore, and the wound began to pain him.  He limped more and more as we proceeded.  We saw no living men.  There was only he and I, and the wooden beam on our shoulders, and the widely scattered bodies on the ground.

The walk to Yarich was not far.  Without a column of men to coordinate, it should have been a matter of two or three hours at most.  But our burden and the Melek’s injury slowed us to the speed of a crawling child.

After endless steps and countless stops, we reached the city’s cultivated fields.  Dark was creeping east across the land; the sun was nearly ready to slip below the horizon.  I had hoped for help once we made it this far – a field hand, or one of the shaduf-raisers, to share the weight that we carried.  But the fields were deserted.  This made the Melek’s fear of having the gates shut against us more acute and, I had to concede, more likely to be realized.  Word of the disaster on the shores of the Descender had made it this far, it was clear.  The tale had run through the empty fields on the lips of those who had not rallied after Ibiranu and his men had burned, or of the caravan-men I had ordered back to the city.

The light of the setting sun in the west blotted out all detail and turned the city into a featureless black shape; just one more cliff-side on the rocky horizon.  But if we could not see the city’s grief and fear as we struggled over the last few hundred cubits to the Outer Gate House, we could certainly hear it.  Wailing and anguish echoed over the city walls and across the plain.

“They will skewer us with a hundred javelins as soon as we approach the gate,” my despondent companion sighed.

“No they won’t,” I replied, though I admit I suspected the same.

“You should go alone.  They might let you in, if you are by yourself.”  His fat lower lip trembled.  The swelling of his face made him look even more like an infant than usual.

“Shut up.”  I was too tired to try to cheer his despair.

The gate was shut.

Many men stood before it.  A crowd of villagers, latecomers to the panic, milled in front of the Outer Gate House and pleaded with the guardsmen for admittance.  The guards did not even show their faces, but stayed behind the heavy doors and behind the parapet on the top of the wall.  Children and their mothers sat crying on the side of the road; the children could not know what was happening, but they knew that their parents were frightened.  Donkeys wandered between the canals; not all the beasts I had sent back had made it inside before the gate was closed.

The Melek was recognized before we could get within fifty strides of the entrance.  Despite the filth that covered us, despite the swelling of his face, and despite the absence of his chariot and his warriors those waiting at the gate still knew him as soon as he came close enough to be seen.  They shouted and ran at us; some of them seeking his help to get inside the city, and some of them venting the fear and rage they felt as a result of the army’s defeat.

We set the travois down gently.  Bensakal’s flesh had begun to stiffen, but I was still able to arrange his limbs as if he merely slept.  I unsheathed the knife and held it with the flat of the blade against my shoulder.  The Melek composed himself quickly, squaring his shoulders and forcing his face into a haughty expression.  I was impressed at the speed with which he made himself royal again, after the day’s disasters and our brutal march home.  I doubt that his fear had truly disappeared; he was merely good at pretending that it had.  But that counts for something, too.

I did not have to use the knife.  When the first shouting man reached us, bellowing something about treachery and cowardice and disgrace, the Melek simply struck him in the face with a fat fist and knocked him down.  That quieted the others.

Sometimes the simplest methods of leadership are the best.

Leaving me with Bensakal, he walked the rest of the way to the Outer Gate House at the head of a crowd of chastened and freshly respectful citizens.  When he reached the gate he roared out a command that it be opened.  This demand was met by a lengthy silence, so he roared it out again.

This was dangerous.  The Melek’s easy and casual violence had cowed the crowd and re-established his authority – but if the guardsmen ignored him and humiliated him, the crowd would take that as a sign that they could safely turn on us.  But just when I was afraid that I would have need of the knife after all, there came from within the gate the sound of a scuffle, and then the doors opened.

Inside, in the first chamber of the gate house, I saw a sight I never expected: the queen, standing between two bleeding and groaning guardsmen, holding a heavy wooden club.  She studied from the same lesson-book of ruler’s wisdom as her husband, and knew the value of direct action for securing obedience.

My heart tore open again as I remembered how Bensakal had joked about the queen’s reputation for harshness, only steps from this very spot.  That laughter was gone forever, now.

The Melek puffed himself up, like a battered and wounded peacock, and strutted to the now-open gate.  Just before he passed into the first chamber, he stopped and looked back at me.

“You!  You!”  He pointed at several of those who stood waiting before the gate.  “Attend to my hanikim!” he ordered, and he made a sweeping gesture in my direction.  I did not bow.  The fear and despair he had shown me on our march had been genuine and true, but our return to the city had brought out his masks once again.  He needed the citizens to see him offering his help to me with an open hand.  I am sure that in his mind he composed a poem about his beneficence even as he gave the order.

I took his help, whatever the motive behind it.  I needed it.

Three of the villagers helped me lift the travois.  They did a bad job of disguising their distaste, but they did not refuse me their service.  The additional hands made my son lighter upon my shoulder; I wished for a way to share out the weight upon my chest.  But no such way has ever been found.

I directed us across the short distance to the cemetery field and to the kohk.  It was not a walk I had wanted to make again so soon.

The villagers lingered around the entrance to the shaft while I descended.  They then assisted me in lowering Bensakal to the chamber entrance.  This was a kindness that I greatly appreciated.  I was an only son as Bensakal was an only son, and there were therefore no cousins or uncles to serve as mourners or to assist with the internment.  Strangers were a poor substitute, but I would have struggled indeed if I had been on my own.

With the sun now set behind the cliffs, the chamber was so dark as to be impenetrable.  After all the efforts I had made that day, in the end the black would have defeated my attempt to bring my son home, had one of the villagers not produced a flint and thrown it down to me.  I was able to light one of the torches left over from my last visit.  It was nearly spent, but I was able to get a little light from it.

None of my helpers could be permitted to climb down to join me in the chamber.  That would have taken us beyond the limits of courtesy.  Alone, I lifted Bensakal, and carried him through the doorway with his remaining arm slung around my neck.

“Greetings, wife,” I said as we entered.  “I’m sorry, but the time has come for you to yield your place.”

I choked.

“Your son must rest there now, Sarai,” I said, knowing that she would gladly give anything for him, in death or life.

To give Bensakal his turn on the platform, I needed to remove the current occupant, and place her in the ossuary.  In ordinary circumstances this entailed extensive ceremonial.  The pressing issue of time forced me to dispense with all of that.  I knelt briefly before the platform and composed myself, and then stood up to begin the grim task –

– And stopped.

Her necklace was gone.

My breath shot out of me and my stomach fluttered.  After all the horror of this day – after all I had seen and suffered – this was beyond the pale.

I held the torch higher, to cast the light further, hoping that perhaps it had merely fallen.  But it was gone.  The platform held nothing but cloth and bone and the stale remains of the kohk-meal.

It filled me with shame that with my son’s corpse behind me I regretted the loss of a mere bauble for even a moment.  But this insult broke what remained of my heart.  I had trusted to the decency of the men of my city, and had been disappointed in the end, as those who trust always are.  While Bensakal and I had crawled beneath the footsteps of the habiru god, while we had run from his servants’ appetite for flesh, perhaps even as my son’s life ebbed away into the dirt, some thief had desecrated our family crypt and looted its one treasure.

The theft threw one more brick of foolishness into my basket.  Most first-share families placed little of durable value into their kohk, to avoid rewarding grave robbers; but I had allowed sentiment to override good sense, yet again.

The theft also made the prospect of moving the bones to the ossuary impossible to face.  How could I disturb Sarai, so soon after some wretched thief had violated her so, and stolen from her directly before her empty eyes?  It was beyond my strength and resolve.  I sat down on the stone floor of the chamber, unable to either act or leave.

I moaned a little, as my soul tore and ached, and the sound of it echoed up through the shaft and out on to the field.  Above ground, my helpers scattered and fled at last; moans from the earth, on a bloody day of defeat and ruin, finally overwhelmed their courtesy.  I lay down on the floor, and felt its dry coolness on my cheek.  Every moment of the years of my son’s life repeated itself in the silence of the stone that pillowed my head.

I don’t know how long I lay on the chamber floor.  It grew even darker outside, as dusk turned into night.  Eventually even in my senselessness I remembered the habiru, and the city gate that fear had shut against even the Melek.  Despite my grief, I did not want to get trapped outside the city walls alone.  I did not want to forget myself underground for so long that when I emerged I found the gate shut once again.

I decided to make the best arrangements I could, and to ask for forgiveness later.  With the torch flickering on the ground, I lifted Bensakal and maneuvered him onto the platform.  I did this without first removing Sarai’s bones.  I laid my son’s head on his mother’s breast and stretched his limbs out beside her.  It was not conventional for the dead to be left in an embrace, unless the deaths had happened together – but it was not unheard of either, and was therefore neither an insult nor a sacrilege.

With no one left to help me, I struggled to climb back up the shaft.  I was too old, too tired, too empty.  I slipped back down on my first attempt, and twisted my ankle.  On my second attempt I scraped my back against the stone.  On my third attempt, I made it out, and emerged in the cemetery field.  In the darkness I felt every tomb around me, and sensed the long sorrow of the occupants of each of them.  I was lost like a shadow in a forest of skulls.  As I walked back to the city, I felt the dead stare through my back; and I knew that we would meet no more until I came to join them forever.

The gate was still open.  It crawled with guardsmen and was prickly with torches.  Work parties roamed the fields, collecting the stray animals left behind in the initial panic.  Others helped guide late-arriving groups of villagers in the dark.  Watching their frenzy of activity, I almost forgot that Yarich was already doomed.  They acted like men determined to ride out a siege; if that was their plan, they were even greater fools than I.

I stumbled through the gate, tripping with exhaustion.  Some of the faces I saw among the guardsmen surprised me; they were men I would have assumed dead on the field before the river.  The Melek had held back many of the most reliable men.  That no doubt explained why a few swings of the queen’s club had been sufficient to restore the city to him.

Some of the guards spoke to me, but I did not reply.  I dragged myself by them in vacant silence.  My soul was still in the cemetery, and I had no words for the living.

Inside the gate the city was a chaos.  Men and animals and carts jammed the narrow streets.   Guardsmen shouted and shoved villagers and city-dwellers alike, trying to force order upon the storm.  Until each man found a place, the city would seethe like an anthill kicked over by a child.  I ignored it all and trudged through the crowds and up the stair.

The Outer Gate had been opened to all who sought refuge within the city walls, but the guard at the Inner Gate stopped even me.  The guardsmen admitted only holders of first and second shares and their households, and those who carried burdens for the storehouses.  I managed to croak my name when challenged, and passed through to the Palace District.

In contrast to the madness of the lower city, the upper city ached with a silence and emptiness that matched that of my own breast.  Neither was total; individual men scuttled from building to building, attending to unknown tasks, and bearers in ones and twos carried their burdens along the streets.  But many of the most vital household heads, and their elder sons, whose voices should have echoed here were gone.  They would not return.

The palace itself glowed with the light of many burning lamps.  Squares of light blazed from the doorways that led to the ceremonial rooms.  I ignored the lit squares, and made for the darkened way that led to my own courtyard.  A messenger boy met me before my door, and summoned me to attend to the Melek.  I shook my head and sent him away.

“Tell Adu-na,” I said to him in a hoarse whisper, and he gasped to hear the name.  “…that he has had enough service from me today.  Tell him Sakal says just that.”

And I turned from him and entered my dark and empty room, and collapsed on to my bed.

EIGHT

And if it is now only a land

Of howling beasts and owls

Was it not so when given to our fathers?

All of it only a heritage of thorns and thistles?

–         Jehuda Halevi, “Songs to Zion”

In the morning I was numb.  This allowed me, at least, to get out of bed again.

The sun came up.  Birds sang and hopped on the roof above.  A light breeze carried the smell of cooking.  All conspired to make me believe that it was a sweet and pleasant morning - but I was not fooled; I had determined to myself that I would be fooled no more.  I knew doom when I saw it, regardless of its gently smiling disguise.

I sought out the Melek, for the simple reason that I had nothing else to do with my time.

The ceremonial hall was full of people.  Guardsmen lined the walls and sat on the floor; their master felt insecure about his safety after his brush with death, it was clear.  The captain of the Inner Gate House stood to the right of the royal stool; he was the closest thing the Melek had left to a military advisor.  The queen sat on her own stool with an angry expression on her face, looking as if she hoped for the chance to swing a club again.  Some village headmen I did not know, and elderly first-share men who had not gone with the army on its march into destruction, milled about with ashen faces, and glanced furtively at the room’s exit.  And Shachath was there – Shachath, chewing on his fingers nervously.

I ambled into the room like a cow crossing a dusty field on a hot day and called for attention.

“Adu-na!” I shouted, and someone hissed.  “Adu-na!” I shouted again, ignoring their objection.  “When will you lead your people out of the city?”

The Melek roosted on his stool and glowered at me, but he did not shout out, nor did he reproach me for my disrespect.  “Sakal, my friend,” he said softly.  “Why speak of flight?  We are preparing to withstand a siege.  Lend us your counsel.”

His servants had repaired his face, somewhat.  They had cleaned his wounds and brought down the swelling of his bruises.  What they had not healed they had covered with cosmetics.  He looked almost presentable in his mask.  But I saw through it to the wounds underneath, just as I saw through his soft words to the fear beneath them.  Now that he was inside his walls again, he was a rat in his own hole.  Every instinct now told him to hide, and he would not – could not – leave.  I decided to say my piece nonetheless.

“The only counsel I can lend you is to run.”  I spread my arms wide.  “The city cannot be held against the terror that came upon us at the river.  You know this, Adu-na!  Do not deceive those who were not there!”

Several of the guardsmen started to move in my direction, prepared to toss me out of the room, or worse.

“Stop!” the Melek snapped, to still them.  “Sakal, you were beside me on the field of the Descender, and stood guard over me when all others had died or fled.  And so I understand your fear of the habiru.  But how can we run?  How can we march our old men into the hills?  Or our children?  We have no choice but to trust our walls.”

I laughed.  “The walls won’t help us.  Not against their fire.  Not against their flying demons.  Their god is too powerful.  Ours are nothing but smoke.”

“Liar!” Shachath screamed out.  “Blasphemer!”  He was beside himself.  He tore at his own hair, and strode madly too and fro.  The odds of Shachath retaining his sanity in the face of this disaster were not good.  “Our gods have deserted us because we have failed them!  Failed in our sacrifices – “

In two steps I was upon him.  I slapped his face as hard as I could, and he staggered.  His own shock silenced him even better than the Melek could have.

“I buried my son last night,” I said, and shook my finger in his red face.  “My son, who was a better man than I have ever been.  So do not talk to me about sacrifice, Priest.”

“Sakal…” the Melek groaned, and for a moment he was the wounded and despairing man who had dragged a travois with me the day before.  “Sakal, we cannot run.  We have nowhere to go.  The walls are our only hope.”

I turned without a word and left.

I considered taking the goods I was owed from the storehouses, commandeering an ass, and abandoning the city alone.  Had I been less numb, I might have had the will to do it and see it through.  But in my grief I was vulnerable to the same doubts as the Melek; there did not seem to be anywhere to go, or anything to do but cower in my room and wait.  I thought of the friends I had known in great Hazor, in Jerusalem, in Tur, and how I might flee to them and ask for their aid – but then I wondered, in the dark part of my mind, if I would still be welcomed by these friends if I appeared at their door without all of the goods of Yarich strung out behind me.

The habiru did not appear at once.  We expected them on our very heels, or at the latest on the day following our defeat at the hands of their god-magic.  But they did not come.  All of Yarich was pressed within the city walls, and the villages and hearths outside were deserted; but no enemy came.  Dogs and grasshoppers and crows gleaned what they willed from our fields, disturbed by no man.

On the second day after the battle, the Melek dispatched scouts to ascertain the progress of the habiru towards the city.  Even for a force as disordered as theirs, the march from the river should have been a matter of less than a day.  Their failure to reach our gates was a mystery.  The captain chose men who had not accompanied the first expedition, in the hope that their fear would be less.  None who had been at the river could be found who would agree to go in any event.  When they came to my rooms to ask me, I laughed like a madman, and then I spat after them into the courtyard when they ran away.

Curiosity and hunger drew me out of my room and to the royal table on the evening of the second day.  The scouts had returned, and I had not eaten since the morning of the battle.  Life returned to me, in a small way, with those desires.  I had wanted nothing and hoped for nothing, but now I found that I wanted the news and I hoped for bread, once again.

When I reached the dining hall, I discovered that the Egyptians had returned to the palace once more.  The Eldest of the House of Amon sat on the Melek’s right with his chin in the air and an arrogant expression in his eyes.  I entertained the idea of striking him, to blot the satisfaction from his face.  The assistants to the Eldest regarded us like men counting goods they have pillaged from a defeated enemy.  The storm will come to your door one day, too, I thought.  When it does, may those about you smile as you smile now.

I did not wait for the ritual drink that opened the meal, but reached for the plate of bread nearest to me and helped myself.  “Thank you, Adu-na,” I said, as I tore off a share.  The Eldest started at my impropriety, but then smiled.

Shachath’s bony face peeked out of a shadow.  “Great One, must we suffer this blasphemer and ingrate?” he snarled.

“Not for much longer,” I replied, though the question had not been posed to me.  “I think that soon all our sufferings will be at an end.”  I winked at him.  “What news from the scouts, Adu-na?”

The Melek smiled.  For the moment, he was prepared to tolerate my rudeness.  “The habiru have not moved.  They spent today raising dolmen-stones on the riverbank.”

“Then we can still leave.”  I dipped my bread in the hummus, and took a very satisfactory mouthful.  “Save the people, and yourself, Adu-na.  They are giving us time.”

“Perhaps they will not come at all.”

If he was willing to clutch at a hope that absurd, then he had moved beyond argument.

“Do you really believe that?  You can blind yourself that much?”

“I would have come to Yarich by now, were I in their place.  But has anything they have done, or anything that we have seen, made any sense?”

“If you do not leave, you are a fool,” I insulted him.  Some distant part of my mind rebelled, even now, at the disrespect I showed to he whom I had served so long; but the greater part of me recalled the blood of Bensakal in the grass, and beat the rebel down.

“I have known kings to keep madmen and clowns in their household for entertainment,” the Eldest said.  “But I have never known one who allowed the madman a seat at his table.”

“My hanikim felt our defeat keenly, and has yet to master the pain of it,” the Melek explained in a tolerant and understanding voice.  “Without my duties to force care upon me, I might sound just like him.”

I bowed my head, but did so in irony.

“And why does he talk of flight?” the Eldest went on, and his tone grew smarmy.  “A garrison of Pharaoh stands ready at Beth Shean.  Why not send for the aid of the divine sun-come-to-earth?  We could carry your message to the garrison commander, and could also bring the Singer to a place of safety, away from the fires of war.”

I laughed long and loud.  If I was to be designated the madman of the court, even in jest, I was going to take advantage of it; I would say out loud what everyone else thought but left unsaid.  “A clever way to extricate yourself from Yarich before you are trapped here by a siege.  And to accomplish your mission as well!  And if, after you bring the Singer to her cage at Beth Shean, the aid you promise now were to arrive too late to do any good…well, your men can always bury the dead, can they not?”

The Eldest stared at me, red eyes popping out of black paint.

“Tell me, did my last bit of insanity entertain you?” I sneered.  “I am new at jestering and wish to improve.”

“Is this how Yarich treats offers of aid?” the Eldest asked, aggrieved.

The Melek did not intercede.  He looked very tired and worn.  I believe that he shared my estimation of their offer, and in his heart was glad I had spoken where he could not.  “As you said, friend – our servant Sakal is without himself.  His voice is not his own.”

The Eldest snapped the fingers of one hand, and the Egyptians unfolded their legs and stood.  “Your fate is your own.  If you believe you can escape it without Pharaoh, we will not dispute that with you.”

“Hope lies not with allies but with the gods,” Shachath said.  He smiled now.  The displeasure shown by the Egyptians gratified him, for whatever reason; this mollified his anger against me, for the moment, since I was the one who had caused that displeasure.

The Egyptians filed out, with their noses in the air to signify the wounding of their dignity.  As they walked away, I reached over and ostentatiously picked at the food left behind on their plates.

The Melek watched me for a while, and then put his head in his hands.

“Hope lies with the gods,” Shachath repeated.  No one acknowledged him, or replied.

On the third day after the battle, the scouts returned with a gruesome tale staining their eyes and lips.

They had observed, that morning, a great commotion in the habiru encampment.  They described much shouting and oaths directed with raised hands to the firmament and to distant mountains.  They saw some men take daggers and slash their arms, and others their faces, while screaming and jumping about in a frenzy.  Finally many hundreds of them danced together ecstatically in a wide circle, and used stone knives to slice at their sexual organs, in the manner employed by the initiates of some Egyptian cults.  Confronted by this revolting climax to the disturbance, the scouts withdrew, as any sane man would have.

After the new report had flown around Yarich like a gathering of crows, the Eldest and his entourage quietly departed the city.  They did not pay their respects to anyone at the palace or temple before they did so; they loaded their baggage on to two donkeys and their sacred charge on to one more, and they simply left.

They passed through the Outer Gate House without question; the guardsmen on duty never considered restraining such important visitors to the city.  A more suspicious or aggressive set of guardsmen might have held them pending word from the palace; but the Melek would probably have let them leave in any event.  They had taken no object and no person from us.  The Singer remained in her temple quarters, unmolested and still dedicated to Yarea and not Amon.  Whatever information the priests might give out about our defenses or the state of our court was not worth protecting, if it meant making an enemy out of Pharaoh.  There was no reason not to just let them go.

I climbed the outer wall and watched them ascend into the hills by the west road.  Their donkeys climbed and climbed and the priests trudged and trudged, and they passed behind the rocks where the road turned on the switchback; and they were gone.

On the fourth day, the scouts reported that the habiru had broken camp.

They are coming, the report said.

It did not need to say anything else.

The habiru scrambled like a host of scorpions over the plain from the east.

They carried no king impaled upon a withered tree on this march.  That tale may have been a false rumor; or, perhaps, they had tired of using that particular battle standard.  Instead, they bore trophies of their victory at the Descender: heads at the end of spears, of both men and horses; the shredded cloth of the royal tent; weapons and chariot wheels.  They had only a few of each of these; the hornets of light had left behind little enough for them to shake at us in their mockery and in their exultation.

When they drew near to the city, I saw that their war leader marched at their head with bare feet.  The march from the river had covered him in blood and dust to the ankles, but he walked without showing any sign of discomfort.  He was tall, and had long and powerful legs and arms, and I would have found him splendid if not for the shining, crazed ferocity in the white of his eyes.

Behind the leader came the priests, with their burden draped in scarlet and gold.

I found it strange that I did not shudder to see that horrible casket.  Had I lost all fear when I lost all hope?  Or did I descend into apathy because I knew that an angry god could pursue his enemies wherever they run, and does not need to peek from any box to see them and destroy them?  I do not know.

They went into camp on the western side of the city, blocking the road into the hills.  I had thought them a great host, but they were still too few to surround the city completely. They kept only small detachments on the eastern side, probably to discourage foragers and to prevent small parties from escaping to the river or the salt sea.

Their camp presented as motley a display as their warriors.  Tents of different types sprawled haphazardly in the stubble of the fields.  They set up no sentries and dug no siege entrenchments.  Their march completed, their warriors took to cleaning their dusty feet in the canals, and climbing trees to pick unripe fruit.

Only the sub-encampment set up by the priests possessed any order or showed evidence of any deliberate plan or care.  They set up a tabernacle of the same fine scarlet and gold material that covered their casket, and adorned it with many lamps.  Plunder, no doubt.   Many guards took up posts before this tabernacle, their discipline a contrast to the irregular laxity of the main camp.  The priests’ own tents, in the same fine material, they set up in a neat square nearby.

We waited, well into that evening, for their offer of a parley and their demand that we surrender – a demand I would have counseled we accept.

It did not come.

The next day the sun rose white with its summer anger, and bleached the blue from the sky.  We enjoyed no pleasant, warm morning before the heat grew; the sun punished us from the moment it cracked over the line of the eastern horizon.

Some whispered that Amon had now turned against us, due to our refusal to sell the Singer into his service, and that we faced his anger along with that of the habiru El/Yahweh.  I doubted this.  The disk of the sun blazed down on invader and citizen alike; it did not single us out for special punishment.  But the whispering went around the city just the same, and brought our low spirits even lower.

When the sun had climbed half of the way to mid-day, their priests stirred in their sub-encampment.  They carried their casket out of its tabernacle on its long poles, and marched with it in the direction of the city.  Word of this passed from the walls down into the streets, and the people wailed and scurried into whatever hiding places they could find; the story of the horrible power the priests bore had been heard by all, by now.

I stood alone on top of the Inner Gate House and watched their progress.  Whatever was to come, I had determined that I would not hide.  Would they burn us now?  Bake us in an oven made of the city’s stones and bricks?  Could the image of their god batter down the city gates?  Or would the terrible hornets of light come once more, to gnaw the city into fragments of rock and wood and bone?

The priests came to within a stone’s throw of the city, and then stopped.  Those few guardsmen who had remained on the walls loosed no arrow or sling shot against them, but merely watched.  Scores more habiru, both warriors and priests, crowded in around the casket, carrying not weapons but – absurdly – musical instruments: cymbals, round frame drums, metal trumpets.  They began to parade along the line of the city wall, beginning near the Outer Gate House and marching north.

They accompanied their march by playing on the instruments.  They performed no song or ritual ode, but just blew in a general din.  Their aim appeared to be to make as much noise as they could, and not to make music.  In this they succeeded, and my ears cried out their objection.  Somehow the sound made the heat of the morning even more wearing.

I watched their progress for a while, as they crept around the western wall of the city in a wide, slow arc.  I admired their endurance – they were poor musicians, but they did not tire or lag; they blew on and on, without stopping, despite the heat.  I had trouble enough just standing atop the gate in the sun, and had to continually pour water over my head with a dipper.  The water washed salt from my forehead down across my lips.

When guardsmen climbed up to join me on the roof of the gate house, I thought they had at last overcome their fear of the habiru magic and returned to their duties.  But they had come for me.  Two of them held clubs – no doubt they meant to subdue me, if I refused to go voluntarily.

It surprised me to learn that my presence was demanded, or even desired.  I had not been summoned to hear the word of my lord since our return to the city; when I saw him, it had been of my own accord.  But I went along without objection.

The ceremonial hall was full of guardsmen when we arrived.  Apparently they considered personal attendance upon the Melek more attractive duty than standing a wall post waiting for an unearthly power to strike them down or immolate them alive.  It was not easy duty today, however.  Most of the guardsmen fretted or paced with agitation – for Shachath was in the hall as well, and he was wild.  He strode about, waving his arms over his head, shouting and pulling at his own hair.  The hapless guards did not know if they should restrain him, or not; and theirs was not an occupation where uncertainty was pleasant.

“Fools!” he screamed.  “Cowards!”  Over and over.  He tried longer insults, but his tongue tripped over them and he stuttered, before returning to his basic refrain.  “Fools!”

The Melek sat on his stool, wringing his hands, unwilling to silence him but unable to withstand his abuse.  “You do not know, Priest!”  He tried to be stern, but failed, and the words came out of him like a child’s whine.  “You were not there!”  When he saw me, he leapt from the stool, and the hands he reached out in my direction were those of a drowning man.  “Sakal!  Tell him!  You were there, you saw it!”

“Tell him what, Adu-na?”

This stopped Shachath’s pacing and demonstrations.  He stood still and spat on the floor at my feet.  “I will not take the word of this blasphemer!  Each time he speaks your name, he renounces Yarich once again!”

“Sakal, tell him.  The Priest demands that we order archers to attack those who now march near the city.  Tell him.”

“They are denigrating us before the image of their god!  They are mocking the enthronement ritual, and for the honor of Yarea and Baal we must not permit it!”

I laughed.  I knew now why I had been summoned.  No one else who had witnessed as much as I had survived.  “Yes, I was there.  Whatever Adu-na has told you is correct.  Attacking their priests is suicide.  It was only when we attacked that their god struck us down.  Call up the shade of Ibiranu from the pit, if you wish to hear more about their sorcery.”  I patted Shachath on the shoulder, in a gesture of mock friendship.  “Our gods will just have to learn to be more humble, little friend,” I said, and I laughed when he smacked my hand away.

Shachath wrapped his arms about himself, as if he was cold.  Given how the heat from outside had already penetrated the palace, it made me think that I was not the only madman here.  “How can you mock the power of the gods, when our army was burned by divine fire, and consumed by demons?  How much more evidence of what the gods can accomplish do you need?  Are you blind?”  He lashed out and seized the Melek by the arm, and the guardsmen fretted even more.  “The fault is mine.  I took pride in an inadequate sacrifice.  But that is something that we can put right.  Can, and must!”

This pushed the drowning man down a little further.  He shook his head, weakly, and stared down at the floor between his feet.  “No.  No.  I have told you already,” he said, and he tried to pull free of the Priest’s grip.  “I will not.  Anything but that…I have told you…”

I did not know what this signified, and he did not explain.  Whatever argument they had, they did not recapitulate it in front of the likes of me.

“May I leave, Adu-na?  I have told your servant the truth, but I doubt he will accept it.  I want to get back to the gate.”  I laughed again, and walked back to the door without waiting for the leave I had requested.  “I love a parade.”

“Can and must, my lord!” Shachath shouted again.  He then called after me, “You will be damned, Sakal!  Damned!”

Will be?  I thought.  Our Priest is behind the times, as always.

Up on the roof of the gate house the sun had gained in strength as noon approached, and its glare glinted off of every surface, including my skin, until my eyes swam with it.  The habiru passed around the north end of the city and proceeded down along the eastern side.

Their demented, toneless music droned on and on, and scratched at my mind.  I might have found some relief from the sun and from the dreadful music if I had climbed down from the tower, but I chose to stay.  I wanted to see all that they did.

When they had passed down the length of the eastern wall and had come back to the road, they turned west again.  They completed a full circuit of the city, and went back into their camp.  The music ceased when the priests’ casket was returned to its tabernacle.  Apparently Shachath had been right, at least in part; the habiru march had been some kind of ritual observance, and not a prelude to an attack.  Although it was not clear why, when they could call upon such power, they had not simply assaulted the city directly.

They completed their march at barely two hours past noon, and many hours of daylight remained to them.  But they did not use them.  Their camp showed little evidence of anything but day-to-day activity.  They might have still been encamped across the river, for all the notice they took of us.  They dug no trenches, and built no siege engines or towers.  They did not subject us to harassment with arrows.  They kindled cooking-fires and drew water from the canals, and gleaned from the fields whatever the harvest gangs had missed.

And in Yarich?  We waited.

When the cliffs blocked the last ray of the sun, and darkness swept across the bowl of the valley, a clamor arose in the lower city.  Women screamed in anguish and men exclaimed in disbelief.  The great spring, the eternal spring that fed our canals, had failed.  The source-stones were now just damp rocks, and the sound of flowing water, always present in that part of the lower city, was gone, replaced by the sound of woe.

A crowd of men ran down from the upper city to see, and I ran with them.  By the Outer Gate House, women knelt at the channel that passed under the wall and frantically tried to draw the little water that had not already flowed away.  They scraped against the bottom of the stone channel with pots and even with their hands.  Fights broke out as women slapped at those behind them who pushed forward and as men shoved at each other’s wives.

So this is how it’s going to be, I thought.

And then I screamed at the foe beyond the wall:  “Just kill us!  Do it!”  I repeated this many times, until I used up my breath, and then I slumped to the ground.

Three of the city’s wells continued to supply water even after the failure of the spring.  The Melek placed a heavy guard about them all.  With the spring gone, we did not know if the wells would be refreshed underground any longer, or if once their waters were drawn they would run dry.  A severe limit was placed on how much water the men of the different shares could draw.  No one complained about the size of his allotment; every man knew that if the water ran out we were all dead.  The city also held a store of beer, which would stretch out the water a little.  But if we lost the spring and the wells, the beer would not buy us many days of life.

The second day of the siege passed the same as the first, albeit with the city more fearful than before the failure of the spring.  In the morning the priests emerged from their sub-encampment, bearing their casket, and undertook their ritual circuit of the city.   Their advance and rear guard accompanied their march with the toneless music once again.  Heat blazed down on the city all day, and was made worse by the care and concern each man had to feel every time he raised a cup of water to his lips.

That night I was summoned from my rooms to the ceremonial hall once again.  The guards, so numerous on my last visit, were now gone.  Only the Melek waited for me.  He looked haggard, and the dark circles around his eyes were not, on this occasion, the result of cosmetics.  The distant seas of the frescoes taunted us both from walls lit sparely by lamps.

His thoughts imprisoned him, and he did not notice me when I entered.  He sat and stared through me, his hands limply holding shards of pottery on his lap. I stood before him for some time, unseen by his vacant eyes, before I spoke.

“Adu-na…Adu-na, I am here.”

He came to himself like an old man waking from a nap.  “Sakal…” he whispered.  He cleared his throat.  “Sakal!” he declared, more firmly.  “Help me find the strength to do it.”

“To do what, Adu-na?”

“Shachath has demanded that we perform the molech ritual,” he said, and he averted his eyes from mine.

I sputtered in shock.  “But…but…its priesthood has lapsed.  No one living has ever even seen it performed.”

This objection had been anticipated.

“Shachath claims that the liturgy was written down and illustrated, and that he has access to it in the temple records.”

His words cut through the madness of my grief, and for a moment I was myself again, and I dropped my tragic pose.  He needed to hear me.  “My lord – please.  It is insane.”

He shot to his feet and waved his hands in the air in exasperation, still holding his potsherds.  “You were there, Sakal!  You saw the forces that fell upon us!  If we could regain the favor of the gods, that power might be ours!”  He seized my shoulders.  “And – and – can we just sit here, and let the city fall, and not take every chance?  Or try every extremity?”

He wanted my permission.  He was not going to get it.

“My lord, listen to me carefully.  I want there to be no misunderstanding.  We have lived in the city together, and attended to its gods together.  We have catered to Shachath together.  Have we ever seen power like what we saw at the river?”

He refused to answer and was silent.

“The priests say, ‘We make the rain fall.  We make the grain ripen.’  And we humor them.  But you know and I know that the rain and the grain would continue without them.”

More silence.

“I do not know what magic or sorcery we are facing.  But I do know that nothing and no one in this city can call that magic up.  If the Priest pretends that he can, he lies.  Perhaps he even lies to himself.  You have to know that this is so.  Do not do this.  If we are to be destroyed, then that is our fate.  Let us not destroy ourselves in anticipation of that fate.”

He frowned.  He had hoped that in my fear and grief I would leap at any suggestion that might protect us or give us the power to take revenge.  I did not play my role, and this prevented him from playing his.

“If you were faithful to the city and were my friend, you would ease my mind,” he reproached me.  “It is settled.  I did not ask you to help me consider what to do.  I asked you for your reassurance.  I asked you to help me do it, but you undermine me instead.  Perhaps the Priest is right about you.”

“There are many men in the city who will happily tell you that whatever you choose to do is right,” I replied.  “Find one of them.”  I pointed to the potsherds, still in his hands.  Writing was scratched onto each of them.  “Are those the names?”

He looked down at the fragments of pottery.  As he remembered them, he turned them over in his fingers.  “Shachath prepared lists of men whose sons were too young to be lost at the river, or who have only daughters.”  He read some of the names quickly, and dispassionately, as if we were reviewing a caravan manifest together.  I knew most of the names.  “The fathers will open their mouths to the gods, and beg for mercy for the city as the price of what they devote.”

One of the lamps exhausted its fuel and winked out, twisting the shadows on our faces.

“Some of those men have sons too young to walk.  What if they refuse?”

He took a deep breath, and drew himself up to his full height.  “Preparations will be made.  No citizen will evade their obligation.”

I backed away from him, and moved towards the door, slowly.  “You’re mad,” I said, and I turned to escape.

“The world is mad!” he shouted after me.  “Tell no one, Sakal!  Tell no one!”

I ran out into the darkness of the city night.

I told no one.

On the third day of the siege the habiru marched around the city once again.  I had almost grown used to the noise; it bothered me less than on the first two days.  The weight of the Melek’s plan pressed down on my spirit and made it easier for me to withdraw into my own thoughts, and pay the sound no mind.

I still hoped that he would change his mind, and not go through with it.  This made me hold my tongue.  If I spread word of what was intended, and unrest arose in the city as a result, he would feel forced to allow Shachath to proceed or the people would say he backed down.  If I said nothing, there would be nothing to force his hand but his own determination, and that might not be enough to do what was proposed.

When the day’s parade had ended and the enemy had returned to his camp, word came that one of the city’s wells had failed.  Nothing could be drawn from it but sand and red mud. The people of the lower city wailed, and held out their hands in the direction of the palace, begging the Melek to take some action to save them.

I still told no one.

An order went down from the palace to the lower city reducing the water ration of the citizens and forbidding the watering of livestock.  In a few days, the animals would begin to die; at least there would be plenty of meat.  A second order banned the remaining people of Gil’al, still in their tents in the marketplace, from accessing either surviving well.  I thought this was cruel, and unjust; many of their men, including their prince, had fallen beside ours at the river.  Some of those men had families among the exiles, and their wives and children were now doomed to a painful death by thirst.  But given the madness of the other orders that had been discussed, I suppose I should not have been surprised by a mere violation of the law of hospitality.

At night between the third and fourth days, a number of citizens attempted to escape.  We hoped that if small parties could pass by the few habiru guarding the east road under cover of night, we might reduce the strain on the city’s remaining water supply.  I was asleep on my cot in my stifling room during the escape attempt, and did not see what transpired with my own eyes.  But I got the story from several men, known to be honest, who had witnessed the escape directly.

Those who were to make the attempt were lowered in baskets over the east wall.  They were mostly old men, and women of various ages – but not children.  We wanted to send out those who would be no help defending the city, but who were old enough to understand the need for silence and stealth.

When all who were to go had made it to the ground, the citizens set out, aiming for the darkest stretch of ground between the enemy’s watch fires.  Many of our people wore dark clothing; the women veiled their faces, and the men blackened theirs with soot.  They had a good chance to pass by the guards unseen.  But when they were only a few hundred cubits from the city, a bright circle of light fell upon them, and presented them to the eyes of our enemies.  The light came from no visible source, but was as brilliant as the light of many lamps together in an enclosed space, even in the middle of the plain.

Being exposed by the light doomed our people, of course.  The nearest habiru warriors ran them down, and slaughtered our men in a brief engagement.  Woe piled upon woe, for when the men had all been dispatched the enemy warriors turned on the women as well.  They held down and decapitated with their curved swords even those young women who would have been valuable slaves.

When the women realized that they were to be slain, and not made captive, they fought.  One old woman managed to wrest a knife for herself, and stabbed a man through the throat before she was hacked to screaming pieces by many different blades.  In so doing, that single old crone took with her to her death as many of the enemy’s warriors as our entire army had taken at the Descender.

When all our people were dead, the light snapped out, and darkness covered the plain once more.

Sunrise on the fourth day brought to the city’s eyes the grim tableau of the slain, who had been left in a pool of their own blood in the dirt to the north of the road.  No effort to bury them had been made, or was made as the day went on.  The enemy left their bodies to rot.  Carrion birds feasted upon them, undisturbed; the vultures did not even bother to fly away when the priests marched by them during the day’s procession.  Flesh made tender by the sun was too great a lure for them to resist, even when confronted by the enemy’s foul musicians.

At the palace men argued with each other, and devised mad plans.  Frantic work began to strengthen the inner wall.  Nothing was said, but I knew that the surviving household heads contemplated withdrawing the guard and all available supplies into the upper city and abandoning the rest of the citizens to their fate.  Loud, angry voices echoed from the palace chambers, and messengers ran to and fro in the city in a hectic spasm of activity.

Just before sunset of the fourth day, the second well failed.

On the fifth day the people rioted.  It was all too much – the heat, and the lack of water, and the strange magic of those who besieged us.  Men killed each other in the streets of the lower city, and looted each other’s homes, searching for stores of water or beer.

The Melek came down from the upper city, surrounded by guards and the surviving village headmen, and with Shachath and the temple staff at his back.  They killed a few of the rioters and hoisted their heads on spears to encourage the others to listen.

The mob was allowed to select one of their number to bring an offer to surrender to the enemy camp.  That way they could know that every possible alternative was being tried, and that they were not asked to suffer merely to protect the privileges of the first-share men.  I, who knew what other plans had also been made in the palace and the temple, knew that it was not only the poor that needed to be convinced that all possible courses of action had been tried.

The mob put up a great brute of a boy, as mobs will: a stonecutter’s assistant with the hands of a giant.  He did not look to have much intelligence, but he only needed enough to carry a simple message asking for terms.  He walked out through the Outer Gate, taking quick steps to cover the distance to the enemy camp before he could become frightened enough to turn back.  We watched him as he was taken before the enemy priests and their war-leader, whose feet remained bare even after five days.  We watched him as he presented the request for terms, with great animation.

And then we watched the enemy impale him on a wooden stake, planted facing the city, and just out of bow range.

He screamed in agony, for the rest of the day.  Through the setting of the sun, and through the night.  Death brought him mercy only with the sunrise of the sixth day.

I slept fitfully in the oven of my rooms after sunrise on the sixth day.  Sleep had been impossible through the night; despite the distance, and the interposition of two walls, the cries of the stonecutter’s boy had somehow found their way to me all through the dark hours.  I wondered how the enemy slept through it; perhaps their god stilled their ears for them, or their hearts.  When his cries had at last ceased, I tried to snatch what sleep I could get before the hammer-blows of the sun and the day noises of the city made rest impossible.

I woke to the sound of coughing and whimpering.  Shachath sat propped in my doorway, muttering to himself, his eyes red and a large bronze beaker of wine clutched in his hands.  I said nothing, and did not move, but he somehow knew that I had awakened.

“It’s today, you know,” he slurred.  “I thought you should know.  Don’t think I enjoy it!”

He took a drink, and lingered at it.

“We have to do it.  It’s that, or nothing.  Or die,” he continued.  “It’s easy for you to object, because you’re already dead.  The whole city could burn around you, and it would mean nothing – we’re all of us together less than a handful of empty barley husks to you, because your boy is gone.”  He shook a bony finger at me.  “Some of us still want to live!  Some of us will do what has to be done!”

“Why come here?” I asked, without lifting my head.  “You don’t need me to approve.  You only need – him.”

He didn’t answer.  Or, perhaps, he did.

“Do you remember when we were boys, Sakal?  You and I and…”  He hesitated.  “…Adu-na?  And he rode with his father in a chariot and pretended there were still lions to hunt, and you walked behind your father to cities across the river and over the hills?  And to Egypt – Egypt!”  He drank the dregs of the wine.  “While you did that, my father shouted at me and slapped my ears, to get me to memorize words that others would recite and songs that others would sing to preserve the city and its fields.  To preserve them!”  He stood to go.  “Do not try to stop what has to happen, Sakal,” he said, and then he was gone.

Messengers from the palace, under heavy guard, went out with the rising sun into the city to the homes or siege quarters of those whose names were on the Priest’s lists.  They carried orders directing those men to prepare to devote their first-born children to the gods, in the ritual of fire known as the molech.  The song of grief we sang in the city that morning was almost as loud as the music played by the habiru as they began their march yet again.

NINE

For your anger and your impatience,

Or for the crime you have committed,

May a gift affect your atonement,

With sacrifice and with offering.

Our sacrifice is slaughtered.

It is the offering made; It is the sacrifice slain.

Let it be offered up to the father of the gods;

Let it be offered up to the family of the gods;

To the assembly of the gods;

To the lofty and exalted.

–         The Ras Shamra Texts

The tophet, tales said, had originally been set up in a twist of the hills, far from the eyes of the city.  The narrow canyon that had held it was lined with many small caves, where following the sacrifice the urns containing the bones and ashes of the devoted were immediately interned.  Caged in the city like beasts, we had no way to seek out this legendary canyon.  Shachath did the best he could while trapped inside the walls.

Instead of a canyon, he had the temple courtyard.  Since large, uncontained bonfires could not safely be lit there, he ordered masons to build a large, circular fire-pit of bricks without mortar.  The pit he filled with the olive wood.

We did not ordinarily fell olive trees for firewood, and had no access to the orchards or groves; this meant that Shachath must have set aside a store of the wood before the siege even began.

I wondered how long he had planned for this.  He had shown extraordinary foresight.

In other cities I have visited where the molech has been performed, I have seen large bronze statues of Astarte that were used in the ceremony.  These statues were cast with the goddess in the posture of holding out her arms to receive the offering.  By some trick of the metalsmiths, after the sacrifice was placed in her embrace the goddess would spread her arms wide, to drop the victim into a fire kindled at her feet.  We had no similar statue of the goddess at Yarich, and no time or skill to fashion one.  Shachath improvised again, and had a large stone statue of the goddess manhandled into the courtyard, and placed at the base of the fire-pit circle.  Its arms did not move, but the sacrifice could at least be presented to the goddess and touched to her breast before being thrown down into the flames.

After the initial grief and shock that followed the announcement that the ancient ritual was to be revived, a surprising number of the citizens acquiesced to the demands placed upon them by the temple and the palace without resistance.  A surprising number to me, at least.  In their place I should have fought against the entire city, even if I could have resisted for no more than a moment before I was overcome.  For many of my fellow citizens, though, piety and terror acted as powerful inducements to obedience.  Most men can be ordered to do practically anything, if they can be convinced that it will save their own skins.

I forced myself to spend the day sitting in the street outside the entrance to the temple courtyard.  I watched the arrival each man who had received word to come to the temple that day.  Some of them brought their wives.  These were men I truly did not understand.  A few led children by the hand; the others carried swaddled bundles.

The Melek spent part of the day at the temple complex.  He did not greet me when he arrived, and would not meet my eyes.  With him came a number of elderly first-share men.  They spoke softly to each of the fathers when they passed through the courtyard arch.  Were their kind words meant to convince the fathers that what they were doing was right?  Or did they need to convince themselves?  Or both?  After these brief words, the parents left; the children remained.

After the last of the children had been taken in by the temple staff, the palace party departed.  They went out of their way to not walk by where I sat.

When the sun went down, I realized that I had not heard the habiru musicians that day.  Passerby, however, assured me that they had marched that morning as they had on each day since the siege began.  I simply had not noticed it.

A sickness of heart had stopped up my ears and deafened them to all around me, it appeared.

Would that it had continued.

At dawn on the seventh day I woke to the sound of sweeping.  I opened my eyes, and was confused at first about where I was; I had fallen asleep on my spot in the street outside the temple complex.  I saw the temple assistants sweeping the courtyard with straw brooms.  This struck me as bitterly absurd, and I laughed until tears filled my eyes.

“That’s it, my friends!” I shouted through the arch.  “Neat and tidy!  Neat and tidy!  We must look our best for our atrocity!”

When three of the them left off their sweeping and walked over to where I sat, I thought they had decided to beat me for my mockery.  But they lifted me up, instead, and carried me into the temple complex.

“Our master says that you must attend the molech, and that we are to restrain you if you try to avoid this duty,” one of them told me.

“Restraint will not be necessary,” I replied.  “I wouldn’t give up being here for all the gold of the Hittites.”

“We are also ordered to make you presentable,” he added.

They removed my stained clothing and dressed me in a clean white kilt.  A female temple slave combed the tangles out of my hair, and covered my head with a fillet of gold hung with white cloth.  Until they set to work on me I had not seen how filthy I had become; battle and flight and the graveyard had left their mark on me, but my eyes had been closed to it.  They paid me such gentle care that I wondered if I was to be part of the ritual, and not just a witness.  It was an idle thought – I had no father living, and thus no one to offer me up…

When we returned to the courtyard the people were already beginning to assemble.   The fire in the pit had been lit, and the temple staff poked at the burning wood as it turned to coals. Soldiers, armed more heavily than guardsmen, and only slightly less well equipped than sagu nagib, took up positions in the courtyard as well.  They surrounded the tophet and formed a line at an angle from the temple to the fire-pit.   This showed less than perfect trust in the piety and civic-mindedness of our citizens; as such, it made perfect sense.

Shachath took his place near Astarte.  He wore a robe of white wool that shined brightly in the early morning sun.  The Singer and the temple musicians stood beside and behind him.  Nahara stared through the crowd, her eyes focused on something far in the distance that could not be seen.  One of her musicians started to cough and had great difficulty stopping.

The Melek did not come.  I cursed him for a coward, but I was not surprised.  Shachath, however, was a big enough fool that he had not expected this, and he waited for the coming of his lord in great distress.  He kept barking at his staff, from his perch near the statue; he sent them to peer around the arch and look down the street.  He did not realize that they looked for someone who would never come.  Finally, when the courtyard was full and all else was ready, he sighed with great exasperation and went forward with the ceremony without him.

His assistants brought the first child out from inside the complex.  A boy child of between two and three, he walked on his own feet, holding the hand of one of the acolytes.  The crowd murmured as he crossed the courtyard.

The deployment of the soldiers kept them between the crowd and the boy.  As the crowd gave voice to its doubt and remorse, the eyes of the soldiers darkened.  They knew they would be needed today; knew they were not just a precaution.

As the boy walked, the musicians began to play.  Nahara sang the lamentation and plea for deliverance.

Just as the little group reached the statue, the boy saw his father in the crowd.  He called out to him, and smiled and laughed and waved.  To the boy, this was just another festival, and he was old enough to hope for some honey to soon appear, or even a bit of meat.  His bright eyes flashed with joy, and I moaned.

It was too much for the crowd, and they surged forward.  The soldiers pushed them back.  One man ducked down and pushed through the line, but he was across the fire-pit from the boy and could do nothing to reach him.  Two soldiers hewed at him with axes, and broke his skull open.  His brains spilled out on to the stones.  After that, the crowd pulled back in fear.

As Shachath lifted the boy, the Singer stumbled in her song.  Tears filled her eyes and choked her throat.  She continued, though, after only a moment.

The Priest took the boy in his hands, and lifted him up to the breast of the statue.  The brief fight between the soldiers and the crowd had convinced him that this was no feast-day, and he was now afraid.  His father rent his clothes and groaned; the boy writhed in the Priest’s hands and cried.  Shachath steadied his grip upon him, and held him firmly against the goddess for the space of several breaths.

And then cast him into the flames.

The little one screamed pitifully as he burned, and tried to climb out of the pit.  The olive branches made a kind of burning platform, and the brick walls had not been laid high enough; the boy was able to stand up on the fiery branches, and scraped his fingers against the top of the wall.  Shachath’s people might have read about the ceremony, but they had not thought it all the way through; they hadn’t counted on their victims’ will to live.  Two of the acolytes had to push the boy back down on to the coals several times before his agony sent him into shock, and his struggles ceased.  The reverberations from his screams evaporated in the sky, and he changed from a boy into a memory.

“Shachath!” I shouted, above the weeping and cursing of the crowd.  “This is for nothing!  Nothing!”

He ignored me, and called for the next child in line.

Nahara could not go on, and sang no more.  Her musicians stopped playing as well.  Some were sickened; some were fascinated; some would not play if the Singer would not sing.

Just then, from outside the walls came the sound of different music.  The habiru players had returned, but this time it sounded as if their entire host had taken up an instrument, or at least banged together their weapons, or struck together rocks.  The din they produced resounded among the city’s houses forcefully.  Their music was more powerful than ours, just as their gods were.

The Priest’s assistants did not want the next child – another boy – to clamber out of the pit.  He had seen what was coming, and fought with them to get away.  He scratched and bit them, and even escaped their clutches once, for a moment.  But like all of us, like every man under the sky, he had nowhere to go.  He took only a handful of steps and was seized again.

They dragged him forward to where his death waited, and then they struck him on the head with a stone.  This silenced him.  Blood ran from his scalp, down the Priest’s arms and onto the stones below, as he was pressed against Astarte.

I stared at the blood as Shachath threw him into the pit.

…Blood ran on the stones, and soaked through the sand in the cracks between the stones; and still the horns blared on…

We cannot ask for forgiveness.  None is possible.  We were selected for our fate long ago.  The smoke of the fires rose into a sky that smiled only on our enemies; there was no one there who would listen to our pleas.  How can there be any forgiveness for those who were damned even before they committed their crimes?

TEN

From the watchtowers the watch has fled; on the caravan road the dusty ones lie in wait; in the gate of the land the door moves in the wind.

–         The Curse of Akkad

I woke from my concussion to the sound of screams.

It took me a moment to get my bearings.  The Inner Gate House had collapsed, taking most of the wall on that side with it, and had slid through the marketplace and part of the way down the hill into the lower city.  I had apparently slid along on top of the debris.

I had settled at the top of a sort of mountain of broken bricks.  Broad scrapes covered my arms and legs, and the blood that oozed from these wounds mixed with stone dust and pulverized mortar to slick my skin.  A dead man lay near me on the left, his head smashed by a section of wall.  Someone’s severed right arm was not far away on the other side.

The habiru had rushed the city when the walls fell.  I saw them moving through the city below me, attacking dazed guardsmen, and cutting to shreds hapless citizens as they crawled out of the wreckage of their homes.  Men or women, young or old, it did not matter – they all went under the sword.   I saw one of the enemy snatch an infant from its dead mother’s arms and bash its head against a ragged remnant of the wall of a house.  The children of the city not murdered by Shachath would die today all the same.

Those animals that had not yet died of thirst or been slaughtered to preserve water during the siege roamed freely in the city, the walls of their pens destroyed; I noted a large number of donkeys and sheep, in particular.  The habiru made no attempt to capture them as spoil, but perversely cornered them and hacked them down with swords and spears as though they were men.

I thought perhaps I was dreaming, or that when I hit my head I had addled my wits.  What kind of warrior fights sheep?  And the ass is the enemy of no one but the poor handler...

I saw many young boys, left alone by the collapse of roofs on the heads of their parents and of walls on the heads of the soldiery, defend themselves against the advancing enemy with nothing but rocks.  They stood in the narrow, rubble-choked streets in gangs of ten or twelve, hurling stones and shattered bricks at the shields of the enemy.  Because they were young boys, they were surprised when this was not effective; and even more surprised when the enemy filled their bodies with arrows and javelins and marched on over their slender and prone forms.

The citizens who had survived the earthquake and who had not yet been slain by the habiru clambered over fallen buildings and up broken stairs to make their way to the upper city.   I joined them.  I knew better than to delude myself that there was anywhere to go, but when a crowd starts to run it is difficult to stop one’s own feet from running along.  I climbed, hand over hand, back up the slope of collapsed wall, and staggered across what remained of the market square.  Faster and less injured men dashed by me, seeking out nonexistent safety.

Not everyone ran.  On the far side of the market I saw a mother huddled on the paving stones with her two small children.  The little ones wailed and cried in terror and confusion as the crowd surged by them.  The mother held them close to comfort them.  “It’s all right - we’ll be with your father soon,” I heard her tell them.  “We will see him in the next world.”

I wished I could believe her, but I knew that I could not.

I ran on.

The upper city had suffered less damage in the earthquake than the lower, and was largely intact if you discounted the destroyed Inner Gate House and wall.  Guardsmen from the palace and the soldiery that I had left behind me when I ran from the temple courtyard were rallying in the vicinity of the royal storehouses.  Designed to be secure against fire and thieves, the storehouses were the last potential redoubts in the city.   I ran toward the nearest of them, with the sound of slaughter and destruction surging behind me like a great wave.

As the wave broke, and habiru warriors appeared around me, moving with impossible speed – How long was I unconscious? – the earth shook again, and I fell into a void as this second earthquake opened the earth beneath my feet.

When I woke the second time, I saw about me a tiny, ruined room, with walls of eroded mud brick and a floor of rough stone.  Thin fingers of sunlight came down from high above through a narrow, uneven shaft.  My head swam and I tasted my own blood on my lips.  From far above, I heard the city’s destruction roll on: screams; metal howling at metal; falling stone.  The smell of smoke stung my nose, even though I had clearly fallen far beneath the level of any fires that might be burning in the upper city’s streets.

Across the room, I saw a face, barely visible in the meager refracted sunlight.  The skull of a man, covered in plaster and with shells for eyes, stared at me from an off-kilter shelf and smiled with painted lips.

Welcome, I swore I heard it whisper – and my sight slipped away again.

I woke a third time to darkness and silence.  I could move, but when I tried to sit up pain shot through my head.  I had urinated on myself and fouled my kilt, my only article of clothing.  It was cold in the dark underground, and I shivered and clutched at myself.

The dawn is coming, the skull whispered in the dark.  It is not far off.

“Who are you?” I cried out.

I am you.  When a man digs down into the hill of Yarich, he finds himself.

“I said that once,” I gasped.  “Almost.”

When the light comes, you will have to climb.

“All right,” I agreed.  “If you say so.”

When the dawn stole down the shaft, the pain in my head had subsided enough to allow me to stand.  I limped across the room, and examined the skull.  Thick dust covered it.  It was missing its lower jaw.  Now that I was fully awake, it had nothing more to say.

The shaft down which I had fallen did not rise straight up; it ascended at a steep, but manageable angle.  With a little care, I managed to drag myself back up it.  But the climb took me merely from one tomb to another.  I emerged into a silent city of the dead; a cemetery in sunlight.

Bodies littered the storehouse street.  Covered in flies and pecked at by crows, they lay wherever they had fallen.  Rats scurried in all directions when I emerged from my hole.  No human movement caught my eye and no human voice came to my ear; only the vermin violated the stillness.

The heavy door of the storehouse nearest to me had been broken off its hinges.  I hobbled over and peered inside: more dead lay in heaps on the storehouse floor, jumbled limbs stuck together with bloody paste.  My stomach fluttered when I saw that behind the bodies, the rows of shelves of goods were undisturbed.  The city had been taken, but the storehouse had not been sacked.  I found this disconcerting, for reasons I could not articulate.

I checked several more storehouses, and they were all the same.  Some of them contained bodies – many of the buildings had hosted their own small ‘last stand’ – but all of them still held all their goods.  I turned my back on the dead and ate a few dried dates that I found, and I drank a little beer; a grim breakfast, despite its sweetness.

I knew that the habiru had pillaged the villages and towns of the Amuru.  You could tell that from their gear.  Why had our own storehouses not been emptied?  Why were our enemies not camped in our city, eating our bread, even now?  Where had they gone?  Why had they killed all, and taken no slaves?  Why had they slain even the animals?  It was a mystery with no answer.  Why did Yarich have to die?  I could see no purpose in it.  The senselessness of it all brought back the throbbing ache in my head.

They had not looted, but they had destroyed.  When I passed by the Scribes’ Kiln House, I saw poor old Rosofer and his assistants on the ground outside its door.  Rosofer’s skull had been cracked open with one of his own tablets.  One of the junior scribes, a pale and weakly fellow who could not have fought, had wet clay jammed into his mouth and down his throat.  I stood in the doorway to the House and looked in to see more smashed tablets strewn on the floor.  Why a warrior would take the time to lavish such attention on records that the city’s fall made worthless was another mystery.

I labored through the ruined streets to the temple.  Fallen buildings blocked part of my way; the dead blocked the rest.  I climbed over the broken stone when I could, and over corpses when I had to.

The bodies stank of rot.  They were no longer fresh corpses; the damage done to some of them by the birds and rats was already considerable.  When I woke I had assumed that I had lost merely one day, but I now wondered whether two or even three days had passed while I slumbered below the earth.  Surely not even the gods could create this much silence and decay in only a single night.

The statue of Astarte stood in the doorway to the temple courtyard like a sentry.  Somehow she had been carried or manhandled there as part of an attempt to barricade the entrance to the temple complex.  She did not quite block the space spanned by the arch, but if defenders had rallied here they might have held the invaders off for some time behind the shelter of her stern countenance.  But whatever defense they had made had failed in the end here, just as it had everywhere else.

I squeezed around the statue and entered a grotesque slaughter-yard.  The dead lay so thick on the ground in the court and in the sanctuary that they made it nearly impossible to walk.   I slipped, twice - the first time on entrails, and the second time on waste.  I almost gave up trying to examine the place in disgust.  But I wanted to find Shachath, if I could; so I pressed on.

Inside the sanctuary, I lingered for a long time.  Bent down on one knee, I wept before a line of children dressed in white robes, now stained red with their own blood.  The older children had died holding hands.  They had escaped our priests, but not the enemy's.  I sobbed for the horror that we had made their home: monsters inside, monsters outside, an end in fear.

I found Nahara in the niche.  Her small form slumped over the altar-piece, its final offering.  She would sing no more.  Her head dangled over the side of the altar on a neck cut almost through.  Her blood had pooled beneath her and congealed into a black amber on the floor.  The habiru had disdained to take any of our treasures, including our finest.  They either did not know, or more likely did not care, what price they could have secured for her from Pharoah.  I did not see any of her musicians – or, at least, none that I recognized; some of the dead had been hacked up so grievously that they resembled butchered animals and not men.  I found a lyre on the floor, but did not find its owner.  It might not be doomed to eternal silence – perhaps the goat-men would come later to pick over the goods of the city that the habiru had left behind – but the music of Yarich would never leap from its strings again.

As I limped away, an object Nahara still held in her dead hand caught my eye.  I bent to examine it more closely.  I thought it was a bracelet: turquoise cubes and black spheres of glass; bronze pendants...

As I recognized what it truly was, I gasped.  It was the necklace of Sarai, and none other.  I staggered and took a step back.  The world had ended, but I could still be shocked.

How had Nahara come to have it?  How had it left the kohk and come here, to be grasped by the Singer so desperately, protected by her even in her final moments?  Who had given it to her, and why?  There was a story here, but like all of the city's other stories it was one I would now never know.

I left the necklace behind when I walked back outside.  For all I know, it lies there still, clutched now by bone instead of flesh.

I never found Shachath.  In the fire-pit in the courtyard, the burned corpse of a man about his size stared up at the sky with his arms outstretched.  Perhaps that was him.  The face of the man was too badly burned for me to identify him.  I wanted to think that it was the Priest, and that the enemy threw him there, after they had crushed all other resistance.  Or, perhaps, that he threw himself upon the flames when all hope was lost.  I hoped that Shachath had suffered the same torment he had inflicted on others in his madness.  But I could not be sure, and will never be sure, unless I get to meet him in the pit and ask.

The palace area was, relative to the rest of the city, fairly pristine.  Dead guardsmen deployed before its entrances in perfect squares of carnage, but they had died in place almost to a man, and once you stepped over the barrier of their bodies the ground beyond them was largely clear.

I found the Melek and the queen in the spell-protected meeting room behind the ceremonial hall.  The queen slouched in a corner, a length of rope tight around her neck.  The Melek bent over the small table, a large knife in his belly, and another knife cut across his neck.  His white eyes stared at me from under a film of early putrefaction.  I deduced from their positions that he had strangled her and then killed himself.

“Adu-na!” I cried – and then my stomach gave out.  My breakfast came back up from my gut, and spewed across the tile floor.

In all this city of gore, why had this tableau been the one to bring up my gorge?  Perhaps because when I saw that Adu-na was dead, I knew I was truly alone.  Yarich was no longer a city, and I was no longer a citizen.  Now I was just another beast picking at the carrion.

I tried to shut his eyes, but his eyelids refused to be pulled down.  I left the room and searched about the palace for some time, looking for an unstained piece of cloth to throw over his face.  I don’t know why I felt it was important to do so, but I did.

Then again, I have never known if I hated or loved him, either.

I would have to answer that question to know why I wanted to cover his face in death; why it pained me to see the white eyes of his end.

When we were boys together, we played beside a canal under a row of palms while our fathers took care of fatherly business.  Older boys nearby threw stones at passing birds, and killed one.  Adu-na was still very small, and seeing the bird fall from the sky made him cry.  I had to pick him up and carry him to where the old men talked.  Perhaps I needed to cover his face because he had always remained that boy to me, in some small part of my heart, even with all that came after.

It took me most of the rest of the day to leave the ruins.

I returned to the storehouse district, and packed a bag of walking-supplies selected from the unplundered stores.  At the palace, I gathered some of my own clothes; they were woven as Bensakal’s had been, and that made them the only treasure I wished to take on my way.

I searched out a way down from the upper city to the lower that did not require me to crawl down a slope.  The streets of the lower city were almost completely blocked with the detritus of fallen houses, and I picked my way over those carefully.  I did not wish to fall into another sinkhole, to learn wisdom from another plastered skull.

Everywhere I went death greeted me.  Death, and the implication of death.  It wore out my eyes and my heart and I barely saw it by the end.  Yarich had been transformed into a spectre.  The tumbled bricks of the city had become the bones of a skeleton; the smoke of the fires that still burned had become the death rattle of an old man.  I walked on this corpse apologetically, and only because I had to cross it to depart.

I cannot say that I passed through the Outer Gate.  The divine power had fallen so heavily there that everything in the vicinity was smashed flat; there was no longer anything that could be called a gate to pass through.  No battle had been fought at the pile of rubble that the gate had become; all of its defenders had been crushed under the heel of the god.  But when I crossed the spot where the gate should have been, and where now there was only pulverized stone and the echo of defeat, I heard the sound of water begin again behind me.

When I crossed over the city boundary, the city was left utterly to the dead.  With the extermination of Yarich accomplished, the spring was loosed to flow again.

I shut my eyes to the green of the oasis, and to the sycamores and palms, and trudged into the brown hills of the west.

EPILOGUE

And if the city falls

But a single man escapes

He will carry the city inside himself

On the roads of exile

He will become the city.

–         Zbigniew Herbert, “Report from the Besieged City”

The great palace of Hazor was built with massive walls as thick as a man is tall and twice as high.  Every span of those walls spoke words of power to the world.  Two decorative pillars of stone broader than any tree flanked the main entrance.  Orthostats of polished basalt covered the lower part of the walls, and the stairs leading up to the columns were painted in many colors.

Near sunset, two men of the court of the King of Hazor stood together on the stair and spoke to each other in low tones.

“An interesting tale,” said the first courtier.

“He’s quite mad, you know,” said the second.

“Oh yes,” the first agreed.  “The survivors of such a disaster are never right in the head afterwards.”

“Obviously something horrible befell Yarich.  Their king was always a bit…off, and he let a gang of rebel scum and outlanders burn his city out from under him.  But fire from the sky?  Divine, carnivorous hornets of light?”

“Songs that could call earthquakes?”

“Mad.  All of it.”

The first courtier shushed the second.  The object of their discussion approached.  Sakal, hanikim and caravan-master of the king of the ruined city of Yarich, walked with small, defeated steps out through the door and down the stairs of the palace, clutching a small bundle.  His blank eyes did not register the presence of either of the courtiers as he walked between the columns.

After he had passed out of sight, the first courtier spoke again.

“They say Jerusalem will come in.”

“I’ve heard the same about Hebron.”

“Yes, well – I doubt there will be enough of these habiru to go around.”

The second courtier shammed great fear.  “But their magic!  Their magic!”

They both laughed, and turned to walk back into the palace.

Behind them, the setting sun splashed the walls of the palace with fiery red.

AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD

Some of the narrative choices made in this tale require clarification and justification.

The study of the history and archaeology of the nations and sites referenced in the Old Testament inspires passionate dispute.  This makes any attempt at writing historical fiction, or even a historical fantasy, set at one of those sites a hazardous undertaking.  It becomes even more hazardous when the heart of the narrative is supernatural, because in this context when we address supernatural topics we’re addressing the core beliefs of major religions.

The best available scholarship, based on the excavations at Tel es-Sultan undertaken by Kathleen Kenyon, indicates that the Biblical narrative of the destruction of Jericho cannot be based on real events.  Kenyon fairly conclusively established that the Jericho site was already a ruin and was not occupied during the time frame generally associated with the Hebrew invasion.  Later work by George Mendenhall cast considerable doubt on the entire concept of a Hebrew invasion, and produced a strong case for the view that the Hebrew/Canaanite wars were a “peasant revolt” waged by farmers and hillmen against the residents of the region’s urban centers.  Biblical traditionalists, led by Bryant Wood, opposed these views with revisionist work that attempted [unsuccessfully, in my view] to re-establish both the general narrative of the invasion chronicled in the Book of Joshua and a timeline that allows for an occupied Jericho during the early stages of that invasion.  When I decided to write a novel based on Joshua, I therefore was faced with the challenge of figuring out how I would write in a reasonably historically accurate way about events that the best scholarship says did not occur and could not have occurred.  To do this, I had to make some compromises.

The first compromise was chronological.  Within the text I carefully never provide a date, or any reference point to a date like the name of the reigning Pharaoh.  Since I never commit to a recognizable or deducible date, this allows me to set the story in a sort of nebulous Middle Bronze Age / Late Bronze Age milieu, where the fact that Jericho is still inhabited can be uncontroversial.  Students of the period will recognize enough snippets of dialogue or description taken from the Amarna letters and the Execration Texts to place the action in a time frame after the reign of Akhenaton, and the Canaanite political situation as I describe it leaves only a few possible decades open as possibilities once that is established – but that’s as specific as I can afford to be.

Other compromises involve Jericho itself.  The Bible specifies that Jericho had a “king”.  For the Joshua story to make any sense, the city has to be an independent state with its own ruler and dependent on its own resources.  Unfortunately, for most of the Late Bronze Age the Canaanite cities south of Hazor were dominated by Egypt and administered by mayors appointed by the Pharaoh.  Strict fealty to the clear historical record on these scores would have made the novel impossible.  In addition, the striking thing to the modern eye about the Tel es-Sultan archaeological site is that it is small; the best estimates we can make of the population it could have supported and housed result in such meager numbers that its capture hardly seems worth an anecdotal mention in the Bible, let alone an extraordinary tale of espionage and miracle spread across several chapters.  I have deliberately made the city of Yarich larger than it could possibly have been.  In order to allow the city to serve as a stand-in for the Canaanite culture as a whole, I have also incorporated into this “Greater Jericho” features of other Bronze Age sites; specialists will recognize the frescoes in the ceremonial hall of Adu-na from the excavations of the palace at Tel Kabri, for example.

But outside of these necessary compromises, I have made every effort to depict a Middle to Late Bronze Age society as accurately as I could manage.  My goal was to respect the historical record and the available research to the extent it was possible to do so while telling an ahistorical story.

The material culture of the city as depicted in these pages is drawn directly from the archaeological record of the Tel es-Sultan site or other near-contemporary Canaanite sites.  Canaan was a crossroads culture, combining Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian influences, each of which has its echoes here.  Several critical items that play a part in the story – the great spring by the Outer Gate; the cemetery made up of artificial caves; the plastered skull buried deep in the lower strata of the hill – are taken directly from the literature.

Some may take issue with my description of a “share”-based city economy, and a great deal of invention was admittedly involved there. Given what we do know about the economies of the petty states of Canaan, I think that it falls well within the limits of literary license.  There is a general consensus that the Canaanite cities had what are known as Redistributive Economies on a model similar to that of Ancient Egypt. All products effectively belonged to the king or the city, and would be collected and stored centrally, and then distributed by the primitive state apparatus to the population. Readers familiar with the Old Testament story of Joseph and his sojourn in Egypt can see traces of this economic system in the tale of Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams. Joseph sees the years of famine coming, and the Pharaoh increases the amount held back in storage as a result; he is then able to distribute the stored-up produce when the famine arrives.

In terms of coming up with a way to work such an economic system into a novel, the first obvious modern equivalent would be the Soviet system. The most straightforward approach would be to depict the Canaanites as the Bronze Age equivalent of Russian shoppers standing in long queues to receive their ration of borscht. But the problem is that Canaanite society was also class-based - their Redistributive Economy was not a communist economy, despite its centralization. There was a professional warrior class, a merchant class, a class of craftsmen, etc. - all of whom appear from the archaeological and limited literary evidence to have been on different economic levels. So I needed a way to combine the diversity of Canaanite society with its economic centralization. I think I found a good way to do that - and I hope that readers like my solution.

Taking the real history of the Late Bronze Age seriously also allowed me to enhance the Biblical account of the overall Jericho campaign. For example, I am indebted to Richard Gabriel's excellent The Military History of Ancient Israel for his account of the chariot tactics employed by the Canaanites. Gabriel persuasively argues that a Canaanite force equipped with chariots, facing an enemy with no chariots on open and flat ground, would have almost certainly attempted to employ a mobile defense based on hit and run tactics; they would only have relied on siege defenses as a last resort. This means that the Biblical account, which leaps directly from Joshua's use of spies against Jericho to an account of the seven-day siege and its associated miracle, cannot be complete. In such circumstances, the Canaanites would have at least attempted to contest the Hebrews' crossing of the Jordan, and would have similarly attempted to engage them on the plain.  Adding those engagements helped the story a great deal – if only by providing it with a second act!

As a final note, I would like to add a word of caution.  The Last Days of Jericho is full of Easter eggs for the reader to find.  Anyone familiar with The Tale of Sinuhe, for example, or with the epic of Danel and Aqhat, will recognize elements of those stories that I have repurposed here.   And since some of the most obvious and blatant allusions I have made are to the work of Mahmoud Darwish [notably in the first chapter] and Adonais [in the last], some readers may be tempted to conclude that I intended this story to be an allegory to modern political history.  I would only point out that I appropriate just as much from the book of Psalms and from medieval Sephardic poets as I do from modern Palestinian sources, and that both of these are dwarfed by the text’s wide range of references to Ugaritic literature.  Whatever issues may be raised here about the morality on display in the Old Testament are not meant to be taken as a critique of any modern state.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

The translations of various Ugaritic documents employed in the chapter epigraphs are taken from The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations, Cyrus H. Gordon, ã 1965.

The Yehuda Halevi snippet is from the Charles Reznikoff translation.  The Poems of Charles Reznikoff, 1918-1975, edited by Seamus Cooney (Boston: David R. Godine, 2005).  Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Charles Reznikoff.

The Zbigniew Herbert snippet is from the John and Bogdana Carpenter translation, Oxford University Press, ã 1987.