Day of War (13 page)

“We have enough tribal fighting, no need to get into spitting contests about who guards the chief.”

They stood in the gray morning, watching the wind swirl through the camp before pelting them with grit and dust that forced eyes to shut and bodies to shiver. The sun was finally up but hidden.

Somewhere someone gave an order, and the great mass of six hundred fighters began to converge into one snakelike stream moving forward toward the trade road.

Following the marching men, Benaiah’s mind wandered. He
thought about his new responsibility. The personal guard needed to be good men as well as foreigners.

He wondered about the Hittite mercenary marching next to him. A friend? Possibly a spy. What kept telling him to trust him?

Eliam, still groggy from the night’s sleep, tripped over a branch as he followed Gareb and crashed to the ground. Several men laughed loudly and whistled at him. He stood and tried to look as if he had done it on purpose, then sprinted, blushing, after the man who had awakened him moments before.

“The men are lazy these days,” Gareb said. He was walking in great strides across the encampment, shouting orders and finding other subordinates who needed to be briefed. The rising sun was hidden behind a dreary bank of clouds, washing the campsite in gray, milky light. The fires of the night before had smoldered into tiny wisps of smoke, and sleepy soldiers crawled out from under their wool blankets, fumbling for their equipment. Those who had been caught sleeping during the morning watch were forced to endure punishments from their section leaders. Eliam watched a man struggle to hold a rock over his head while his leader screamed at him.

Men were unwrapping the packages of food sent by relatives,
eyed enviously by those who had to beg their rations from others. Some didn’t eat for days at a time. The men who received food were forced to share it with those who did not, but most saved the choice portions for themselves. The cheese was always moldy, but if it was sliced carefully, some could be spared. Cakes of hard bread usually lasted the longest.

Eliam had become accustomed to the food in the field. The king’s tent fared better. He and other workers usually found enough leftover meat and fruit to eat well. The king didn’t eat much anymore, and his dreary countenance had its effect on the army, which moved sluggishly every morning.

Gareb stopped walking so abruptly that Eliam nearly bumped into him. He was looking at a sword propped against a fallen tree near a fighting position on the perimeter. The soldier nearby was stretching and chatting casually with his battle partner. Gareb quietly picked the sword up, then motioned for Eliam to follow. After a few more paces, he saw another discarded sword and stole that one. Five swords later Eliam began to wonder why exactly he was removing the weapons from all of the men days before a battle.

“If these careless fools want to give back their swords to the uncircumcised Philistines, then I’ll help them,” Gareb said over his shoulder.

His eyes searched the camp for any other violations. Eliam studied the gray flecks in Gareb’s beard. He was not an old man but acted like he was. Scars of many wars covered his body. The men shied away as Gareb approached; his temper and hawk’s eye for discipline infractions were highly feared. Word must have been passed around the night before that Gareb was back in the ranks; Jamaliel had told Eliam that he was a legend.

Eliam had no idea why he had been summoned to come along on this little walk. Earlier that morning, while Eliam had been lying awake thinking about the conversation the night before, Gareb had
stuck his head into the tent and told him to join him for an inspection of the camp. When Eliam asked why, he was ignored. The more time he spent around these men, the more he realized that eloquence was not part of the battle drills. Speech and instruction were thankfully short, but Eliam often found himself confused about what was going on around him. Entire conversations included only a couple of words. Some of the men seemed smart. Perhaps they simply found no use for pretty language.

He shivered under his layers of wool and wondered again why the weather was so cold. At least the rain and snow had stopped. The army was always so slow when the weather was bad. Everyone was in a foul mood; the men were slow to get moving each morning, which was probably why Gareb was personally seeing to it that Jonathan’s regiment was prepared.

“The men are lazy these days,” Gareb said again. “Didn’t used to be that way.”

Eliam was unsure whether he should respond, so he remained silent. Gareb had told him earlier in the morning that Saul’s war council had gone on late. Spies had reported Philistine movements into the Jezreel Valley, now visible in the husky gray morning with a layer of mist settled in it. If they had moved faster and followed Jonathan’s advice, Gareb huffed, they could have closed off the pass near Megiddo from Philistine incursion.

Now the area was swarming with the Sea People, and their camp across the valley at Shunem grew daily. If conditions were right, Eliam could see the village where the Philistines gathered. Today as he looked in that direction, all he saw was a bank of clouds.

“Spies tell us the main force isn’t even here yet,” Gareb said. “The king still won’t act. What in a mule’s hind leg he’s thinking by letting them pile into the pass like that I’ll never …” Gareb bit his lip. He looked at Eliam from the edge of his eye.

Eliam had not taken offense at the remarks against his king.
Instead, he took the opportunity to ask a question. “What happened at Michmash?”

Gareb ignored him and watched the men around them continue preparing for the day. The morning meal was taking too long. He shouted a few more times and men scattered. Then he said, “You are going to take my place. Not for this war, but later. You’re not ready yet, so he’ll need me against the Philistines, but I want you to begin preparing. You will probably run water out to us during this coming battle, but you need to learn how to carry the armor. I’ll teach you how. Of course, that assumes any of us make it out of this.”

At first Eliam thought Gareb was talking to a man nearby, a soldier rolling up his blanket. He wondered why the man did not respond. Eliam looked up at Gareb, who was scanning the hillside.

“Well? Say something.”

“Me?”

“No, the scorpion by your foot. He’d make a great armor bearer. Nasty jab, I would guess.” Eliam looked down by his foot instinctively and immediately regretted it.

Gareb chuckled. “They raise them dumber by the year now. Where are you from?”

“The … Hebron area. My father owns land near there.”

“Judah’s land?”

Eliam nodded.

“Shame. They need to be getting smarter down there. Hope you’re not the usual.” He rubbed his nose. “Yes, I was talking to you. He wants you trained up and ready. Don’t ask me why.”

“But I’ve never even seen a battle. Why?”

“I just said don’t ask me why. I don’t know. You weren’t my first choice either. But that’s what he wants.”

“Who?” asked Eliam.

“Jonathan. I came in from plowing dirt so that he didn’t get
himself killed, but I’m done after this. He wants you to replace me. Only the Almighty knows why. Just stay with me—move that pile out of here! — stay with me in the fight to come so you can see what an armor bearer does. We don’t just bear the armor.”

Gareb didn’t look at Eliam during most of the conversation and kept interrupting himself with shouted orders to others. One of the men who had lost his sword to Gareb’s thievery approached them nervously and asked if they had seen his sword. Gareb made him stand nearby holding it over his head, with orders that he could lower it only when his arms fell off.

“I know your section leader, and I know he has taught you about weapon security before. You had better have this weapon with you every hour of the day. I’d better hear your woman complaining that you take it to bed with you.”

Gareb spoke to Eliam again. “We have no blacksmiths, so every weapon is precious. Only strong and smart men are given the chance to carry an iron sword. This fellow isn’t smart, so we’ll see how strong he is.” Gareb folded his arms and finally looked at the stunned Eliam standing next to him. “Like I was saying, you won’t be formally trained, but you’ll be fine. When I started we only had rocks and sticks, and I still managed to kill Philistines by the dozen.”

Eliam stared. His father would not believe him when he heard. Armor bearer to the future king of Israel. He repeated it inside his head to make sense of it. He still had questions but wanted to make sure he did not look like an overeager fool.

Soft dawn light covered the ground around them. The noises didn’t change: clinking and occasional commotion. The soldier holding the sword over his head was panting now, beads of sweat dripping down his nose. He looked at them pleadingly.

Gareb glanced at him. “Gets heavy after a while. Good way to build up the arms. Sometimes I make them hold twigs over their
head. They laugh it off at first. Eight hours later they aren’t laughing anymore.”

He motioned for Eliam to follow, then said to the soldier being punished, “Drop your arms and I’ll have you speared. Swords are precious. When your arms finally give out I want you to turn that weapon in to your commander and tell him that only men carry swords.”

Gareb moved on and Eliam followed him, stepping over rocks the whole way. They are everywhere in this country, Eliam thought absentmindedly. A man couldn’t even lie down for a night without moving rocks out of the way. There were rocks underneath the rocks, and digging them out only produced more rocks.

Gareb spoke in his gruff voice again. “All right, might as well start now. The rule is: never leave your master in battle. Don’t run from the field. It will get bad, and then it will get worse, and you still never leave him. There will be times everyone will run but the two of you. Stay next to him. Sometimes you’re going to fight the best man the enemy has, along with his armor bearer, just the four of you face-to-face. Stay next to your leader. Other times it will be you and him alone against hundreds.
Stay next to him!
Don’t expect to just hop out of the way and let him do the work.”

Gareb was speaking while picking up discarded weapons. Eliam had many questions but was afraid to stop him for an explanation. The cloth wrapped around his shoulders sagged, and he straightened it. He would have to build up muscle. This made no sense. Yes, he was taking lessons, and Jonathan had seemed to take a liking to him, but armor bearer? The position of honor?

“What happened on that day at Michmash between Jonathan and the king?” The question was out of Eliam before he could stop it.

Gareb glanced at him and rubbed his head, gesturing for him to sit on one of the rocks. “You’re not going to quit asking, are you?”

“No, lord. I need to know. I need to know as much as possible if I am to do this.”

“Don’t call me lord. I’m not some prince or war chief.” He sighed. “You can know, I guess. Most do already; don’t know how you missed it.”

Gareb breathed a moment and looked at the soldiers moving. They were fully awake now, with more purpose in their steps. Eliam watched him, wondering what was going on in his mind. Gareb seemed to hate the cold weather and became fouler every time he had to adjust his cloak.

“He woke me up before daylight. Said there were two swords in the entire army and that he had one of them. His father was not going to do anything about the Philistine army threatening us, so he told me that if we hit them hard and fast, Yahweh might bring about a great victory.

“I thought he was crazy, but told him I would be with him no matter what. We snuck out of the camp, and you know the rest. After we crossed the gorge and climbed up, he hit them so violently that I thought the war would be over before I even blocked a single attack to his flank. There never was a man who could fight like Jonathan, and on that day he didn’t even have his bow. We ran hard and we killed Philistines. You never saw so many terrified sea-drinking pagans. It was just the two of us, and they ran like we were warriors sent from the presence of Yahweh himself.

“It was hot, really hot, so after the entire garrison at the outpost was dead, we decided to chase the rest of them down the ridge. He wanted to destroy them before they could form up with the rest of their army, but that battle was never in doubt. He could have wiped out their entire flank by himself, that’s how stunned they were. Speed and maneuvering, son. Live it all your life.”

He paused a moment to shout at the man holding the sword up, still visible in the distance across the camp, telling him that his
arms had not fallen off yet and to get it back over his head. The man was crying out in agony but managed to hoist it up.

“Looking back across the canyon — you remember how we crossed the canyon and climbed up the other side — I could see the rest of the army of Israel charging down the slope. They had seen what Jonathan and I were doing, and that must have inspired them, because what was once a bunch of clucking hens immediately became a group of fighting men. That’s the thing about leading men, Eliam. They’re always going to follow the man who leads from the front.

“Soon afterward, the king gave an order that no one was to eat anything until the end of the day. Vowed it to Yahweh. Said that if any man stopped to eat something he would be put to death. It was a foolish thing to do, one of many —”

He cleared his throat, as if regretting it. Eliam was listening quietly but fighting impatience.

Something clattered. The man being punished had dropped his sword and then fallen over when he tried to pick it up. Gareb glanced at him and then stared at the tree line in the distance.

“Jonathan didn’t hear the order not to eat, so as we came to the trees — remember it was really hot — we needed to rest. Hours had gone by. I remember swatting at a bee, then another, and then I looked down at my feet and saw a beehive in a hollowed log. Honey is hard to find, despite how it always makes it to the king’s table.

“He reached in and grabbed the honey and started to eat it. I was too hot to eat, and I don’t like to eat when a fight is going on. It was just honey, and who could have known about an order like that?

“The day ended, the Philistines ran, and there we all were back at the camp with the king, and all I heard him tell Jonathan was how angry he was at him for charging out without orders. Even after all that we did, driving out a Philistine garrison by ourselves. He said Yahweh was not responding to the ephod, and that someone
must have sinned, and it was Jonathan’s fault. I heard later that he was trying to manipulate the ephod. So he called all of the men up to see who had sinned. The lot fell to Jonathan —”

“Sinned?” asked Eliam. “How did Jonathan sin by eating honey?”

“The king had made a vow that no one would eat, had made it to Yahweh, so the sin was in breaking the vow. It would have never happened if the fool hadn’t …” Gareb remained silent for a while, as if thinking. Eliam waited.