OTHNEIL

The Force of God

Chapter Two

by Richard S. Barnett

CHAPTER TWO

The men of Israel wiped out all the Highborn soldiers of Ai and Bethel that day, making such a mound of dead that people far and wide have called the place “Heap of Ruins” ever since. Nearly a hundred of our men died too, but we had proved that Israel had a real army. When we gave thanks for our victory that evening, Joshua stood on the pile of stones we had heaped over the corpse of the Amorite king.
"My sons," he said, "men of Israel, today you have shown that you can serve the Lord like true soldiers. Now let all the bronze battleaxes and helmets you gathered be melted down for knives and spearheads. They will serve you better. Keep their spears and knives for yourselves, and let the leaders of hundreds make sure that every man has the weapons he needs."
As my share of the spoils, he gave me this bronze knife that I have carried ever since. It once had designs inlaid with gold and a handle of ivory, but I've used it so long that I’ve worn and polished them away. Even so, Ehud, this curved blade will bite as deep as ever into a foe. Just remember to give it a twist when you thrust so you can pull it out.
Joshua called Gera, Haddar, and me forward in front of all the people.
"You did well, my sons," he told us. "The eagle would have flown out our trap if you hadn't closed it. Today you have each earned places as leaders of troops of twelve. Praise the Lord for men who have eyes for battle!"
Joshua soon made Haddar the leader of a hundred, then a thousand spearmen of Manasseh. The touch of Joshua's hand on my shoulders and his words meant more to me than any of the loot that the other soldiers had found. Caleb and Kenash thanked me too, and I felt proud to serve them. I had chosen not to join my brothers in their looting and the Lord had blessed my choice.
Joshua's hearty praise encouraged Gera and me to do greater things for him. We taught our troops how to fight together when our army took Bethel and went on to capture the highlands. As a Benjaminite archer, Gera turned his men into the best slingers and archers in the army, while my troop kept their shields and spears. Seeing how we covered each other's men in battle, Caleb began teaching his other troops of archers and spearmen to do the same.
My brothers and Gedawr complained to Caleb when he stripped them of their places of leadership after their lapse in the battle at Heap of Ruins. They still thought they should command Gera and me because they were older. Far from giving in to them, Caleb placed them under the command of his firstborn, Kenash, with orders to make real soldiers of them. "Where were you at Ai?" he growled. "Israel has no use for leaders who think only of plunder. You're no better than thieves."
Acsah gave no sign that she ever noticed me during all that strife. One look from her would have brightened my life, but she had no reason to notice me out of all the thousands of soldiers in Joshua's army. Indeed, I didn't even see her for months because Caleb ordered her to stay with the other women at Gilgal, the circle of stones near Bethel where Joshua set up his camp.
Some cities in the highlands, such as Gibeon or Crag City, couldn't wait to make peace with us. The men of Crag City called themselves Hivvites, and they had elders like us instead of kings like the Amorites. Other cities of the highlands shut themselves up behind their walls. Joshua would cut those cities off and leave them to starve until they came out to fight us.
Frightened messengers from Crag City came one day to our camp at Gilgal, the Circle of Stones. They told Joshua that the Highborn kings in the southern highlands and the coastal plains had made peace among themselves in order to attack us. The Hivvites had seen the Highborn gathering on the plain for battle, and they could see their scouts already marching up the valley of Aijalon, the main pass from the coastal plain to Crag City and the highlands.
"So, the Lord has given the ungodly into our hands!" Joshua declared with a laugh.
The Hivvites from Crag City and a handful of our own elders feared otherwise and told him so.
"The Highborn want you to think a show of force will frighten us away," Caleb warned them. "Yet I'm surprised that they would lead their hosts into battle at the height of summer."
"Let them die of heat and thirst if that's the way they want to serve their sun god." Joshua agreed. "Yes, if we can smash their hosts, they'll learn not to join forces against us. Let's see what we can do to draw those idolaters into a trap and wipe them out."
Joshua and Caleb walked aside to make their plans away from the ears of the messengers. When they came back, they commanded the messengers to stay in our camp, but they gave me orders to take my troop to Crag City. “Dress as common folk,” Caleb instructed me. “Watch the movements of the Highborn, and send me a runner at least once a day. Hide your knives in your girdles, and take no other weapons but your staffs. Our foes must not know that you are armed and watching them."
The first of the Highborn soldiers did not see us lying in wait when they came marching up to Crag City. The Hivvites welcomed them with wine and feasting. When nothing more happened, we scuttled down through the thickets of brush on the ridge until we came close to where Aijalon guards the entrance to the valley. We saw how the smoke of campfires hung over the plain beyond and shrouded masses of tents, soldiers, and chariots. I sent a runner back to Joshua while we hid and watched.
I sent another runner the next day when the Highborn began their march toward Crag City with swarms of spearmen on foot in the forefront, thumping their spears in time on their shields. We saw from our hiding places on the ridge how the spearmen jostled one another as they crushed themselves into narrower and narrower columns where the walls of the valley began to close in on them. Their path grew steeper, and the dust and midsummer heat must have made life miserable. The Highborn charioteers milled around in fury in the mouth of the valley, looking for a chance to push their way through the foot soldiers. A few tried to drive out of the valley but they only shattered the flimsy wheels of their chariots and overturned them. We barely kept from laughing and jeering while we stole back through the bushes on the ridge. The armies of the Highborn had stretched themselves out all along the valley by nightfall, although only a few spearmen had reached the head of the valley and we could see most of them struggling inside the gorge.
We had slipped around the head of the gorge to rejoin our army when we stumbled over a lone spearman who had fainted from the heat and thirst of the day. He was in such a sorry shape that he had already lost his shield and weapons. We stripped him and bound his hands behind his back before allowing him a sip of water, and we led him back to our camp with a noose around his neck.
Joshua and Caleb met us before we reached our camp. They had led our army in a night march to Crag City.
"We're closing our trap on the ungodly, praise the Lord!" Joshua declared when we showed him our captive.
"Well, let's see if this fellow has a tongue," Caleb growled. "I want to know more about what we've got trapped in that valley!"
Joshua agreed and sent Gedawr to find someone who could question our captive in his own tongue. It did not take long to coax answers out of the man, and they stunned us.
"It's the king of Jerusalem we have to thank for this," Gedawr told Joshua and Caleb. "Five kings of the Highborn have gathered all their forces against us, and they have five men for every one of us!"
"Will you never learn how these Highborn brag and put on airs? Every ruffian who makes himself a village chief claims to be the king of a great city." Caleb growled back at his son. "They can call themselves gods for all I care, but those five kings will soon be only tired and thirsty wretches with no will to fight."
"Maybe," Joshua agreed slowly. "But this is what we shall do, with the Lord's help. First, we must surprise their forces outside Crag City, drive them back into the valley, and close our trap. Then we shall harry the ungodly from above the valley before we march down and smite them from one end to the other."
We marched through the night to Crag City and I guided our men into place before dawn. The watchdogs of the Highborn didn't even stir until we had crept almost into their camps. The watchdogs got away but their masters were too sodden with drink to put up much of a fight. Those who had made their way out of the valley the day before, we chased back.
Panic broke out among the struggling soldiers who choked the valley floor. A pall of mist and smoke hid its depths from us, but the noise told me the men already there thought the newcomers were attacking them, and they all began fighting each other. At the same time, Joshua led our main forces along the ridgeline and as they marched, they rolled every loose boulder they could find into the valley. Wherever Haddar saw a trail into the valley, he sent a troop or two to prick the hosts of the Highborn on their flank. "Hit them and run before they can strike back," Joshua and Caleb told him. Whenever any of the Highborn tried to find their way out of the valley, Joshua and Caleb had men ready to slaughter them.
The killing went on until noon, when our main force had drawn close to the mouth of the valley. Heat and thirst had sapped own our strength by then, while we could see more than half of the Highborn army waiting for us, still fresh and ready for battle. They had formed in ranks and companies on the open plain beyond the valley, with their charioteers drawn up before them.
Our horns sounded, and we gathered to finish the day's work. I shrank from it; I'd gone without sleep for over a day, and the heat bore down on me so that I could hardly drag myself along. I felt a hundred years old, and the rest of our army must have felt the same, except for old Joshua and Caleb. Both men seemed as fresh as ever as they walked up and down our ranks giving orders and praise.
A rumble sounded over the noise of the army. I looked up and saw the sky turning dark. The air felt thick and stifling. A black storm cloud bore down on us from the west and filled the sky from north to south, driving a cloud of dust before it. Fire shot through the cloud and black fingers reached out, writhing like snakes when they touched the earth. A roaring filled the air while a black pillar of cloud swept up the valley before us, followed by a curtain of rain too thick to see through. I didn't mind how the hail stung me; I lifted my face to it instead of covering my head like the other soldiers. Its coolness refreshed me and I felt like a new man, ready for the fray.
The storm passed quickly and our horns sounded again. As the air cleared, shouts of wonder and triumph rose from our ranks when we saw what the storm had done to the hosts of the Highborn on the plain below. The center of the storm had clawed right through their midst but left us unscathed. The wind and hail had wrecked every chariot, while the horses ran wild in terror, trampling men. The tents of their leaders and kings had either blown away or ripped to shreds in the wild wind. Hailstones as big as my fist covered the ground where their army had been, leaving men battered and bleeding everywhere. I tell you that hail must have killed three times as many of the Highborn as we did.
"The Lord fights for Israel!" Joshua shouted and he gave the order to advance. We marched down from our ridge and spread onto the plain. Hailstones crunched under our sandals but quickly melted away. As we marched, Joshua and Caleb passed the order to find the five kings of the Highborn. Joshua wanted them alive if they yet lived.
A few of the enemy tried to rally and fight back, but we overcame them easily. Most of those whose shields and armor saved them from the hail chose to flee. Seeing no sign of the five kings, we questioned all the soldiers we found hiding beneath dead bodies. They told us that the five kings had left with their bodyguards for Jerusalem that morning after seeing their hopes of an easy victory crumble.
Joshua and Caleb sent for Gera and me that evening.
"My sons," Joshua told us, "You have done well but we have not finished our task. The Lord will not grant us a victory if the kings of the Highborn go free. You two must take your troops and track down the five kings while we lead the army back to Crag City and make ready for battle. Send a messenger to us there."
Our men wanted to stay and gather the spoils of the slain until Gera and I told them about our task of finding the five kings and their gold. Then they couldn't wait to leave. We left the battlefield by a trail leading south. The tracks of fleeing soldiers had covered the tracks of the five kings by then, so we had to question Canaanite peasants whenever we saw one.
The Canaanite women and children fled from the huts where they lived in the soil of their animals, but their men waited for us. Though starved and afraid of us, they had no love for the Highborn and eagerly pointed out the path the five kings had taken.
We found their day-old tracks after a while and followed them west into the pass that leads to Jerusalem, where they turned aside into a narrower gorge.
"They won't know we have followed them, but let's watch out for an ambush," Gera told me. We formed a double file to march up the gorge, and I took the lead at a trot. I stopped and waited for Gera when I saw smoke rising from a line of trees at the base of a cliff.
"Why haven’t they broken camp?" Gera asked. "It doesn't make sense. The sun has climbed high in the sky, and they should have left long ago."
"Surely they would have if they had known about us," I told Gera. "Let's creep up on them from both sides. I'll go first, and you'll be ready to help me if they have laid a trap."
My troop and I stayed hidden in the cover of the brush as we closed in. From our cover, we could see about twenty Highborn soldiers sitting around or lying with each other in the shade outside a cave where a waist-high stone wall enclosed a sheepfold. What those men were doing so shocked me that I gave the order to attack without waiting for Gera and his bowmen and slingers. My haste didn't really spoil the surprise: we killed nearly half before they all woke up. The biggest soldier tried to rally the rest, and a few more tried to run away, only to be shot down by Gera's men. The last eight alive grouped together to defend the mouth of the cave, and five more straggled out to join them. They were only half-dressed but their purple garments and gilded trappings marked them as the five Highborn kings.
The big man stood in front of the five kings, bellowing and waving his battleaxe at us. He loomed head and shoulders above us and could have made three or four of me. I'm sure he wanted me to fight him single-handed, but I would sooner have taken my chances with a bear or a wild ox.
"Gera, it's your turn," I shouted.
Gera and his men shot a flight of arrows and stones at the Highborn, and we followed with spears. The big soldier smashed our spears like straws, broke through our men, and fled. He killed or wounded five of my men and left me trembling from the shock of the fight. If the Amorites had three or four more men like that fellow, I would not be alive today. Without him, we quickly overcame the others and chased the kings into their cave.
I went to drag the kings out of their cave but when I peered inside, three small children stumbled out crying, dazed, and naked. Blazing with anger at the evil men in the cave, I immediately told my men to wall up the mouth of the cave with boulders and care for the children. They made our captives, wounded or not, roll the boulders into place. Fearing that the big soldier would come back with help, I left Gera in charge to guard the cave while I went for Joshua and Caleb. I didn't like leaving them, but it was far too dangerous to send anyone but myself. That big Amorite could have been lying in wait anywhere for a lone runner.
I asked the Lord to watch over Gera and my men, but thoughts of what might happen to them tormented me all the way. I climbed out of the ravine and walked north to Crag City, where I found Joshua and Caleb that evening. We marched back to the cave of the sheepfold by the light of torches and a waning moon and we found Gera and our men safely keeping watch.
Relieved but worn out, I found a place to sleep while Joshua took charge of the kings in the cave. When Gera awoke me the next morning, I saw their bodies hanging from trees nearby.
"Come on, brother," Gera told me; "we have another nest of evildoers to wipe out. As soon as Joshua saw those children we found and he understood how the kings of the Highborn amuse themselves, he put them to death. They called themselves kings of Jerusalem, Arbah City, Summit City, Lachish, and Bull City, but no deed was too vile for them.
"Joshua said, 'This is the land the Lord has given us, and we need no other king in our midst. We shall cast down every so-called king who does evil in the names of false gods!'"
The forces that Joshua had brought had already marched off to the next city of the Highborn, which we could see perched on the ridge high above the cave. Not knowing or caring what they called the city, we named it Sheepfold, or Makkedah, after the cave of the sheepfold. Joshua didn't leave enough of its walls standing to make a sheepfold.
Before we began our march down to the plains and back to the north, Joshua paused in front of the cave and gave orders to throw the remains of the five kings into the cave and seal it with boulders.
While the soldiers carried out his orders, Joshua spoke to us: "The Lord gave the five kings into our hands. The cities of the highlands and the plains may never again be able to gather such a force against us. I know that many of you long for your share of this land, but before we can settle down we must strike the kings of the north lest they gather against us. They are many and they are strong; we must keep our army together lest they overcome us."
I sensed some dissent and disappointment, but no one dared find fault with our victories so far. The army of the twelve tribes would follow its leader like a pack of wolves --as long as their leader could make the kill. Our leader had Caleb at his side and he had the words to sway and lead men. Even so, I could understand Joshua's anxiety. After so many years of wandering, the people of Israel yearned to settle in their new land. The army might not hold together for another forty days.
The more I thought about it, the more clearly I saw why Joshua wanted to keep the army together as long as he could. The smaller tribes could never defeat the Highborn kings on their own; the Canaanites were more likely to make slaves of them instead. Joshua and Caleb wanted a more secure future for all the tribes of Israel as a people free to serve the Lord in the good land He gave us--free of bondage to kings who fatten themselves by doing evil in the name of false gods.
I asked the Lord to let me help make their dreams come true.