The Philistine Warrior (14 page)

Hawk-eyed Nomion to Ekron went; it was his plan to face

And fight the tribe

Of Dan, when Piram spied a cattle drive, wagons on the road

Which leads from
Lebanon
. “The cone-like caps upon their Heads suggest

Hittites,” Piram said. “But no! They’re Philistines! It’s

Bene’s horde, arrived at last!”

Clattering from Taurus heights, driving hard and fast!

--the
Nomiad
, Stanza XXXVIII

Upon my return from
Egypt
, I found preparations already under way in Askelon for the coming campaign against the Danites. The Sheren of Ekron, a middle-aged and mediocre general named Ittai, had proposed a punitive strike up the
Sorek
River
Valley
, into the hills, in the direction of
Jerusalem
. Our foray would go past Beth-

Shemesh and also, if possible, north to
Gibeon
and Bethal, returning to Ekron by way of Beth-horon and
Gezer
.

“The idea,” Sheren Ittai explained, “is to destroy Danite villages and ruin their crops; pitched battles are to be avoided as too costly, even if (as we should expect) we could ultimely win. We want to jostle them back into their hills, away from our farms and trade

routes, and then kill off their flocks in the hills themselves before we return to the plains.”

All of this was supposed to be in retaliation for the numberless provocations—border incidents, caravan raids, and similar outrages—perpetrated by the Danites during the previous years; actually, of course, during many previous decades, off and on. All of the hill tribes had pestered us in such fashion, but Ittai was naturally most concerned about the Danites, because they live near Ekron. The other Philistine cities agreed to support his campaign because we feared the effect of Danite depredations on the rest of
Canaan
—too many Danite raids make our subject Canaanites restless, and they start getting the wrong kinds of ideas in their heads, especially when Hebrews spur them on. The Danites, however, are certainly our most formidable enemies, inasmuch as their nobles are not really Canaanite, but rather the bastard offspring, by Canaanite women, of our ancient foes, the Danite pirates of the
Aegean
.

I soon had a volunteer troop of charioteers recruited, and I began to train them as a unit. In olden days, some of our warriors did no more with their chariots but ride them to the scene of battle, where they’d dismount to fight—as I’d recently witnessed, to my embarrassment, while in Warati’s command. So I had to remind my young bucks that they were supposed to fight as Egyptian and Hittite charioteers fight—that is, maneuver as a unit, peppering enemy formations with arrows while on the move, until they, the enemy, break ranks; then we can ride them down. It wasn’t easy to keep my high-spirited lads together in that way, but they usually saw the wisdom of unity—and of staying mounted. After all, we would have infantry to close with the enemy while we terrorized them from afar, before our foes would break formation to run.

I worked my boys at maneuvers a lot, but we also had time for fun. How gaily we sang and joked as we rode along, my dear companions, so many now dead. I recall how we once stormed into a little Canaanite village and drank lusty toasts to their elders—and then chased down many a young lass in their olive groves and wheat fields! I myself caught and wrestled into (secretly pleased) submission a broad-hipped peasant girl. Afterwards, she wanted to ride in my chariot all the way to Ekron, I suspect to sell her hips in

the bazaar—though she vowed to love only me. I gave her a whack on the fanny and sent her back to the grain silo from which she came.

Ekron couldn’t pay for all of our expenses, however, and little could be expected in the way of loot from Danite territory. Askelon would therefore have to foot most of the bill; yet Pai, the insatiable overseer of our port, demanded more and more money for his ships and trade—and he had the powerful, money-grubbing, mercantile interests behind him. Granted, we need a strong maritime trade….

In any event, a solution to the fiscal problem appeared: the marriage of Delai to Prince Ekosh had brought Askelon and
Gath
closer together than ever before; Chancellor Zaggi consequently obtained a cash subsidy from
Gath
as her contribution to the campaign. This paid not only for my troop, but also for a battalion of infantry from Askelon—which, along with another battalion from
Gaza
, got put under the command of my old nemesis, the commoner Warati, who received a promotion to full colonel for the occasion.

Thus commenced Warati’s renewed connection with his hometown,
Gaza
, all under the watchful eye of my Uncle Zaggi, in whose service Warati had begun his rise to power. That man’s capacity for wangling his way into high places was fantastic. How the drill-master progressed! He even married the daughter of
Gaza
’s Sheren, no less. But I refused to serve under his command, insisting that I must report directly to Sheren Ittai. My troop, after all, had been augmented by some volunteers from
Ashdod
and
Gath
, and so I really had a small battalion—or, as we say in the chariot service, a squadron—to command. Thus I got Sheren Maoch to promote me to the rank of major, thereby off-setting somewhat the recent elevation of Warati to his full colonelcy.

A formidable force it was, then, when the Sheren of Ekron took command: my squadron, Warati’s two battalions, Ekron’s two battalions of infantry, and our supply train. All in all, a brigade of

Philistine warriors—although some of our infantry companies were made up of loyal Canaanites, those who had no love for the hill tribes. Each unit carried its own portable image of its favorite god, to be

displayed in battle. But this entirely acceptable (to me) recognition of the gods then got compounded into folly during our assembly in Ekron.

There sat the leaders of Philistia, including Sheren Ittai, my superstitious Uncle Zaggi, and his equally superstitious henchman, Warati—gathered to consult Ba’alzebub, the “Lord of the Flies,” in order to determine our route of march. This was hilarious. Just think of it! The great men of our race sitting in awe, watching a bunch of ordinary houseflies! The priests can tell the future, they say, by observing the dance of the flies—which spells out in code the will of Ba’alzebub. It’s strange how we Phlistines look down on the wretched Canaanites, and then take up with their superstitions. I’ve always preferred to trust in my sword. I believe in the deities as much as the next man, but I doubt that They are pleased with such idiotic behavior.

Anyway, we soon left our camp at Ekron and began our march toward the hills. Once out of the city gates, we kept our guard up. Ekron itself had formerly been a Danite town—before Nomion’s conquests—and, by that autumn, control over her hinterland had deteriorated so much that hostile Danites could be found, once again, close to our Philistine settlements. When we met with such minor bands, however, we brushed them aside with ease: the speed, firepower, and fighting qualities of my charioteers were too much for them.

The Danite villages we soon came across had for the most part been abandoned. We burned them to the ground, along with whatever goods and crops we could neither consume, nor carry, or send back to Ekron. After all, we’d warned the Danites that their taxes would go up! And since it was harvest time (we’d planned it that way), their losses were tremendous. Some settlements tried to put up an inevitably futile resistance; these, too, we destroyed, and we sent the people back to Ekron as slaves for the duration of the campaign…promising to return them to their land as our serfs, later.

On the other hand, we naturally hoped to divide our enemies by giving preferential treatment to any and all villages which might choose to cooperate with us. A few such hamlets near
Gibeon
, I recall, surrendered without a fight, and expressed their willingness to

serve Ekron. So our campaign developed in a paradoxical way: although the original idea had been to destroy the Danites’ capacity for war, we soon found ourselves trying to gain the loyalty of as many Danites as possible. At least that was Sheren Ittai’s objective—after all, he would have to live with nearby Danites in the long run, no matter what happened during our campaign.

Colonel Warati, however, wanted to destroy everything and everybody he could get his hands on. Behind his congenital hatred of the Danites, I could detect the deliberate policy of Warati’s mentor, Chancellor Zaggi—which was to clear the foothills of both Danites and Canaanites, so our Philistine soldier-farmers could settle the land in their place. This was, of course, my Uncle’s long-standing solution to all of our border problems, so much so that I sometimes found myself sympathizing with Pai—who still thought of
Philistia
as mainly a system of ports and overseas trade. Consequently, I tended to side with Ittai as he tried to enlist Canaanites, and even Danites, as friends.

Well, since we thus vacillated between Sheren Ittai’s plan to gain allies (on the one hand), and Colonel Warati’s ham-handed disregard of that plan (on the other hand), we naturally failed to accomplish either program, and merely made all the more trouble for ourselves.

I can well recall the day when the dubious nature of our enterprise came home to me most clearly. I was with a portion of my squadron, south of
Gibeon
; our mission was to meet a supply train coming from Ekron, and then escort it up to the front. (Already my charioteers had been reduced to scouting and escort duties because of the unfavorable terrain—and because of Warati’s influence over Sheren Ittai’s tactics.) We arrived at a little village—I can’t even remember its name—and found our supply train waiting for us there, just as we had planned. But the village itself was in ruins: the peasants’ huts burnt out, the place almost entirely depopulated. My first thought was that this must be some of Warati’s work, and I searched out the train commander to get the full story.

I found him sitting on a watering trough in the center of the village, surveying the scene; it was my old friend Jaita, now a captain.

“What the hell’s happened here?” I asked him.

He took off his helmet and wiped his brow; he had a quite dejected look on his face, so unusual for him. “Well, sir, you see…this
was
one of the hamlets which surrendered and agreed to submit to Ekron….”

“Yes, I remember,” I said. “Go on.”

“Of course, we had to take away their weapons—we couldn’t leave an armed Danite village on our line of communications, no matter how submissive they might appear; and we couldn’t afford to leave a garrison to watch them. We told them we’d give back their spears and bows, such as they were, after our return from the hills….” He paused and waved his hand around.

“That’s what the Sheren ordered,” I remarked, already understanding what had happened.

Jaita confirmed my fears: “Yes, sir, but after we left, Danite guerrillas came down from the mountains; they burned and looted the place, their own fellow clansmen…murdered the elders who’d cooperated with us. Take a look at this….” He took me over to one of the larger huts—or what was left of it—and pointed to a body, an old man, strangled or smothered with what happeared to be raw meat, but I wasn’t close enough yet to tell for sure.

“Is it…?”

“The chief elder…and that’s his wife….” The old woman had been ripped open, and then I realized that her husband’s throat and mouth were encircled and stuffed with her intestines, or sex organs, or both.