Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (28 page)

Devora nudged Shomar to a slightly quicker pace, but Omri stayed beside them, complimenting her eyes, the line of her jaw, the cradle of her hips. Devora’s face burned hotter.

Hurriya shifted as though about to act or speak; Devora clenched her hand tightly around the girl’s arm through the wool of her salmah, forbidding it.

“I like the way you ride that horse,” Omri crooned. “Would you like to ride something else?” As Devora refused to look at him, Omri sidled close enough to place his hand on her thigh, his fingers gripping her in the most nauseating manner. She turned on him as quickly as a serpent. “What are you doing?” she whispered fiercely. “Do you think I won’t cry out and have you stoned for trying to possess another man’s woman?”

“I don’t see another man here,” Omri grinned. “He seems to have lost you.”

As if she were a sort of misplaced trinket that had rolled out from under her husband’s watchful eye and might now be picked up! Lappidoth had taught her that men were capable of valuing all of a woman, not only her thighs or her womb. This oaf apparently wanted only to rut with her. She was the
navi
; who did he think he was?

“Get your hand
off
me,” Devora hissed.

Omri’s fingers dug into her thigh as his face flushed with anger. Perhaps he had not heard that commanding tone from a woman since he was a small boy in his mother’s tent.

Devora’s eyes went dark. She reached for Mishpat.

Just then there was a clatter of hooves, and glancing over her shoulder Devora saw Zadok riding toward them from the tents at a clip that was just a little too quick to be casual. Relief swept through her like a summer wind.

Omri followed her gaze and scowled. “Does that dog always heel you?” he muttered. His hand left her thigh.

“Only when the
navi
needs him to,” Devora said quietly. “I am
kadosh
, Omri. Holy. Not to be touched.”

He sneered. “You are still a woman.”

“Not your woman.”

“Huh. The Galilee is a long way from Shiloh.”

Devora’s insides went cold. How dare he. Did he think distance lessened her husband’s claims on her, or hers on him? Or did Omri mean to threaten her, to indicate
he
could claim her as he pleased, here in the north, among his own people?

Zadok was nearly up to them. Omri whispered, “If you find your need is hot on you, woman, and you need a man between your legs, my tent is easy to find.”

“Shouldn’t you be making plans for dealing with the dead?” Her hand clenched about Mishpat’s hilt, a fact that Zadok’s eyes
didn’t miss as he reined up beside her. Massive and brooding and watching Omri with his cold, dark face.

“Omri,” Zadok grinned—though the grin did not touch his eyes. “Is there any beer in the camp?”

Omri bristled, as though expecting a challenge. But Zadok offered none.

“Ride with me,” the nazarite said. “There’s a lot we need to talk about.” He said that with a bit of an edge to it, and in a moment he’d grasped the pommel of Omri’s saddle and was steering the man’s horse away from the women. Devora let out the breath she’d been holding, but her hand did not lift from Mishpat’s hilt.

“You still think I should sleep alone at the camp’s edge?” Hurriya asked quietly.

“
I
will be sleeping at the camp’s edge,” Devora said firmly. “I am
kadosh
. My tent will stand apart. Zadok will be at hand. You will have bedding outside my tent. Be alert and cry out if you need to. But you won’t need to. No one but a fool would cross Zadok.”

Hurriya looked ahead, at the men standing outside their tents. “I see nothing but fools,” she said.

Choosing not to answer that, Devora watched Zadok and Omri cantering ahead, then lifted her eyes, looked again at the placid lake and the too-silent town on the farther shore. Cold clenched about her heart. She didn’t know what Hurriya’s vision meant, and the younger
navi
was untrained, unable to interpret the things God showed to her. But Devora did know this. Whatever was to happen here in the north would begin there, at that lake.

At the town of Walls, which no longer had any. Among houses silent as cairns for the dead.

As Shomar followed Zadok’s horse among the tents, Devora began to notice how
odd
this camp was. Not at all what she might have expected—but then, her experience of fighting men was largely limited to the nazarites, who were well-armed, disciplined, and who acted as though ferocity were an essential, if unspoken, part of their vow. This camp was
not
a camp of nazarites. It was something else entirely.

For one thing, the men were barely armed at all. Only a few with shields, some without even spears, just farming implements or sharpened poles. These were northern men; their fathers hadn’t taken any lions’ shares of the loot from the cities whose walls had tumbled in the south where the Tumbling Water stopped tumbling at last and moved lazy and wide through green fields. And the glances of desire they cast at the two women riding past could not disguise their underlying fear. Devora saw the way their hands trembled, the pallor of their faces. Was it
these
men she had come north for? These were only children, fearing the dark.

The men gathered near as she walked Shomar through the tents, and the horse shied, having never been among such a press of people. Devora patted the horse’s flank to calm him. Feeling the shiver that passed through Hurriya, Devora said softly by the girl’s ear, “My husband’s horse will not drop you.”

Hurriya gave a terse nod.

“Anath loves horses,” the Canaanite said after a moment, keeping her eyes on Zadok’s horse ahead of them, refusing to glance at the men who crowded close to either side. “She even found one, a wild horse by the river. She tamed it and used to ride it in the early morning. She thought none of us knew, but
I
knew.” Again the shiver. “I need to tell her horses hurt. They hurt. Why does she always look happy after riding?”

“A horse doesn’t always hurt,” Devora smiled. “We just haven’t ridden much, you and I. We will heal.” Privately she wondered if that was true of the girl. It was perhaps a miracle that she was
still this lucid. Would herbs help, or was this journey in the north consuming the girl’s last strength? She cursed Barak in her heart for making such a journey necessary.

She tried to ignore the fear in the many faces around her. But what good would a camp filled with terrified men be to her or to God?

“
Damn it
,” she whispered.

She kicked Shomar to a gallop, startling a cry from Hurriya. Then a shout from Zadok, who had turned in his saddle at Hurriya’s cry. Devora made for the center of the camp, pulling up her horse where the tents were thickest. Men gathered in a half circle about her, and she lifted one hand high, her other arm about the Canaanite.

“Tribes of the north!” she cried. “Put away your fear! Bury it. Raise a cairn over it. Shun it as you would the dead. It will do you as much harm, or more. Remember that you are men. And men of Israel, whose fathers wrestled with God in the desert and wrung blessings from him!” Her voice rose nearly to a scream. “God gave you this land of promise, took it from others who were here before you and gave it into your hands. Now defend it!”

The men looked at her, but none raised their voices to affirm her words. Their faces were still pale with fear. Devora faltered. She was used to men listening attentively when the
navi
spoke, before springing to action. But these men had never stood before the
navi
’s seat. In their faces, Devora saw that her words neither shamed them nor inspired them. In their eyes, she saw that they were merely listening to a woman because a few moments ago there had been no woman in the camp, and she was strange to them.

“Listen,” she told them, trying to keep her voice steady. Their gaze unnerved her. “Everyone fears the dead,” she said. “I do too. But the dead are weak, and the God of your land is strong. Do you fear to face the dead without spears, shields, with just a fence
pole in your hands? The dead don’t even have that. They are just stumbling, clumsy bodies. Taking them down,” she chopped her arm through the air, “is like cutting trees. Our fathers broke a strong wall at Yeriho. The dead are not stronger than a stone wall.”

The men stared at her in silence.

“Be strong and courageous,” she urged them. “Show our God that you do not doubt, that you are not less than your fathers were.” She faltered. “Do you not know who I am?” she asked at last.

“You are from Shiloh,” one man called out.

“I am the
navi
of Israel,” she said. “I see what God sees.”

“God has turned his eyes away,” another man called. “We passed an orchard—it was blighted.”

A murmur rose from the men, an angry, despairing sound. Hurriya shuddered, and Devora’s arm tightened about her. She understood; the men had seen the
malakh ha-mavet
, even as she had. And the only vision of victory she had to share was an image of a woman driving a peg through a corpse’s skull. She’d told Barak that women would protect Israel. But if she told these men that, these cruel northern men, they would surely only laugh at her with that cold, bitter laughter that she knew all too well. What could she tell them? These were not supplicants waiting on her judgment beneath the olive tree—yet they
were
waiting on her judgment. They were waiting to hear what God might say to them, what accusation God might make to explain the presence of the walking dead, or what defense God might make for the removal of his protection. All their eyes on her. So many eyes filled with dread.

“God will defend us,” she said hoarsely. “He fights with us.” The inadequacy of her words shook her.

“Let’s go,” Hurriya whispered, turning her head so that her lips were not far from the
navi
’s ear. “Please, let’s just go.”

“Be still,” Devora whispered back. She gazed out over those despairing faces and understood the Canaanite’s panic. She had miscalculated. All it would take was the wrong word spoken, and these men might take their despair and terror out on
her
. She could feel Zadok’s tension behind her, as though all the air around the nazarite was stretched tight, ready to snap. Omri at least had slipped away, no doubt uncomfortable around the nazarite.

Lappidoth had wanted her to take all the nazarites with her. Swallowing, she conceded that he might perhaps have been right.

But her anger was stronger than her fear. These men would
not
wilt like a dying crop and leave her and this Canaanite girl and the other women of the land to face the dead for them. “Where is Barak ben Abinoam?” she cried.

Mutely, several of the men gestured toward the shore, and Devora glanced there and saw by the water one tent larger than the others, a great pavilion dyed in earth colors, rich browns and reds. Devora lifted her eyes, caught Zadok’s gaze, nodded toward the pavilion. Then she turned her back on the scared men, coldly, deliberately. Keeping her arm tight around the Canaanite, whose breathing was quick and shallow, perhaps from fever, perhaps from fear.

Devora gave the tent a grim look.

She would make sure this was a meeting Barak ben Abinoam would never forget.

B
ARAK WAITED
,
cross-legged, on the rug-covered floor of his pavilion. He could hear the
navi
’s voice outside, speaking to his frightened men. He cursed Nimri in the silence of his heart for failing to bring him the Ark, that he might burn the unclean dead from the land. As a child sitting between his grandfather’s knees, he’d heard of how the Ark had burned dry the Tumbling Water itself, which south of Kinnor Sea was not the stream it was here but rather a roaring, crashing river falling out of the high hills. He’d heard how the tribes had crossed over on dry ground. Of how the Ark had brought drought to their enemies or kindled their tents like straw. He glanced at his spear where it rested against one of the four poles of his tent. A spear was enough for a man to carry against raiders from the sea—but against the dead?

Barak heard the sounds of horse and saddle outside of the door of his tent and straightened. She was here, the
navi
, just outside.
He dreaded this meeting but had determined that Devora would come to
him
, here. He would not argue with a
woman
where his men could see and hear. Especially
this
woman.

She was
kadosh
, set apart. Which meant she couldn’t be understood, no more than God. She was a woman; when he’d faced her on her hill above Shiloh, he’d seen the fineness of her features, her smallness, the shape of her body within her dress. She should be in her husband’s tent, pleasing him or mending his garments, or preparing stew and warm milk for him. But she was not in her husband’s tent. She was here. And it was to her, out of all the men and women of the land, that God chose to speak and reveal what was to come. She and the Ark were both vessels to carry words spoken by God. One vessel of wood, one of flesh, both were reminders that God was at hand.