David Ascendant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 7) (31 page)

In the morning, David had apologized to the two women several times over and promised that he would never treat them with such dishonesty ever again. Polygamy was not illegal, but it certainly diluted the precious, exclusive unity of marriage. He tried to convince them that he was truly in love with the both of them, and he only hoped that he could prove that love over time.

“That would take a very
long
time,” said Abigail.

“And
a lot
of proof,” added Ahinoam.

They forgave him as best they could and tried to make the most of their situation, though they strangely still claimed to be in the way of women, and therefore unavailable for the marriage bed for some time.

On the day of their departure for Ziklag, Abigail pulled David aside to complain to him while Ahinoam prepared the horses.

“David, Ahinoam is very young and immature. She does not know how to keep a household. You need to tell her to stop treating the servants like they are horses. She gives them treats and allows them too much freedom. I am the eldest, and I require a certain amount of priority and deference. I am not being demanding. I am not asking to be the queen of Gath or anything. But she is like a child. She does not clean up after herself, and she has no manners.”

David listened sincerely and tried to understand. But he had no idea what she was talking about. He did not believe she was lying, but he just did not see what she was referring to. Maybe some of it, but she seemed to remember enough details to choke an onager.

The next day, Ahinoam took him aside while Abigail went to market to get some food for the trip.

“David, Abigail is very old and set in her ways. She tries to control the household. You need to tell her to stop treating the servants as if they are captives of war. She does not reward them a bit, and allows them no freedom. I know I am the younger, but she is so demanding, she acts like the Queen of Gath. And she treats me like a child. She chases after me, picking up and clucking like an old hen. She is too fastidious and she has the manners of a grizzled war general.”

David listened sincerely and tried to understand. It had started to become more clear to him that he was in store for a long and difficult polygamous marriage. It was hard enough to keep up with one woman’s relational needs and peculiar mysteries. But two of them at odds with one another appeared to be an impossible task of unconquerable magnitude. He began to wonder if this was the chastising consequence of his own selfish choices. Yahweh was finally giving him his fill in order to teach him a lesson.

David’s consolation was his lingering hope that once the two women had settled down a bit and gotten used to their marital situation, that it would not take too long before they were willing to have marital conjugation with him—maybe together at the same time. He prayed for harmony from Yahweh.

Still, the stress made him fantasize about what he no longer had, the exciting first love of his lost wife, Michal. How uncomplicated it had been with their young love. How easy everything seemed to work out with her. The pleasures, the simplicity, the fun of youth.

But that was all in the past for him now. He had to grow up into the leader Yahweh had promised he would be. He had to put behind him his childish ways of the past. He had to accept the responsibility of his own choices, as well as the calling of his god.

              • • • • •

David rode ahead of his train of followers to Ziklag. Benaiah and his bodyguard of twenty gibborim accompanied him. They would scout the way to make sure there were no hostile tribes or enemy traps along the route. The twenty mile trek would take the six hundred warriors and their nine hundred family members two days because of the young and old traveling with them and carrying their entire households on the backs of camels and donkeys.

Abishai and Joab led the civilian train, Ittai and his Gittites picked up the rear. Jonathan ben Shimei rode with Ittai and Ummi. The Mouse had grown on the blacksmith. He had a witty tongue that compensated for his small size and made Ummi laugh. But Ittai had also seen himself in the little warrior, who gave his soul to the cause with everything he had, and always seemed to surprise those around him because they maintained such low expectations for him.

Though Ittai looked tall to other Israelites at about five foot, eight inches, he was actually a dwarf by the nine foot giant standards of most Rephaim. So he never called Jonathan “Mouse,” as the others did. It reminded him too much of his own insulting nickname, “Runt.” Instead, he trained Jonathan in fighting tactics and building muscle. But Jonathan’s skill with a bow was so superior to others, Ittai made sure his apprentice focused on keeping that talent sharpened and ready. Ittai thought to himself,
One day, they will no longer call him Mouse, they will call him Hawk for his sharpshooting skill.

Jonathan interrupted Ittai’s thoughts, “I cannot wait to kill my first giant.”

Ittai looked at him. “It is not a game, Jonathan. Rephaim are not like animals we hunt. They are the Seed of the Serpent.”

“Is that not what you are training me to understand?”

“Yes. You must know your enemy before you can overcome them. Inside and out.”

Jonathan sighed. “It is clear I will never be of enough physical prowess to vanquish one. And if I could not hit their head, I doubt an entire quiver of my little arrows could drop one.”

“Unless you hit them in the right spots.”

Jonathan considered his words.

Ittai added, “Know them inside and out, and you have the key to their downfall.”

Jonathan looked over at Ummi who had been listening the entire ride. “Is that how you engineered Ittai’s downfall, Ummi? You know him inside and out?”

Ummi smiled. “Inside and out.”

Ittai looked at his beloved and they shared a loving smile.

              • • • • •

David and his men arrived at the empty town on the first night. Achish had already cleared it out of its original inhabitants to make room for David and his people.

They set up tents just outside the perimeter of the city and waited for their countrymen to catch up with them before entering the city as a whole community.

After a good meal of quail and wine, David retired to his tent to get his rest for the evening. But shortly before midnight, he heard the sound of a party arriving on horseback. They were greeted by David’s guards and allowed entrance to the camp. It must have been someone from their group running ahead. Since he was not alerted, David knew it was not an emergency or alarm from attack.

A sole figure approached his tent with a lamp. He could see it was clearly a woman in cloaked garb. He got excited. It was one of his wives. But which one? After a sexless week, were they already beginning to compete for his amorous attention? This one was the first. She was the most aggressive. It excited him.

Was it Abigail, staking her claim as the eldest?

Was it Ahinoam rushing to get the first touch of love because of the hungrier desire of youth?

Whoever she was, would she be more aggressive and abandon herself with more passion in order to outdo the other?

She pulled down her hood and his heart sank.

It was Lady Bisha.

She pushed him inside his tent and closed the flap behind her.

She was breathing heavily.

“My lady. What brings you this evening?”

She stared at him with ravenous eyes. “Well, aren’t you the wild stud, with your two mares?”

He said, “Lady Bisha, you should not be here.”

“No?” she said. “I think I should be. How is your new arrangement working out for your marital relations? I understand twice the women results in twice the dissatisfaction.”

“How would you know…” he began to ask.

She answered him before he could finish asking, “I am queen of Gath, David. I have my spies. And I also have my desires.”

She pulled the sash on her cloak. Her robe opened just enough to show him she was wearing exotic wear underneath. It looked Egyptian. It looked desirable.

She whispered, “I want to make you an offer, my love-starved liege.”

He swallowed.

She stepped closer to him like a panther on the hunt. “You and I both know that marriage is an agreement for political or other purposes. And you and I both know that duty and obligation strangle the erotic out of the relationship of husband and wife, or in your case,
wives
. Familiarity, propriety, and all the petty squabbles and demands of lawfully wedded women.”

She dripped with spite for the law. But he could not deny that there was truth to what she was saying.

“I offer you freedom from all of that,” she continued, “and the opportunity to abandon your petty scruples to the wind for the most extreme experience of your pleasure. I offer you complete and absolute submission. I, Bisha, the Lady queen of Gath, will lay down my power and will do anything you want.
Anything
. I will let you do anything you want to me to fulfill your darkest desires. I will let you hurt me. You would have complete domination of me with no consequences and no shame. I swear to you, David. Anything you desire.”

He looked at her. “Anything?”

“Anything—
and everything
,” she repeated.

“Complete obedience?”

“Absolute. As unto a god.”

“Good,” he said. “Then I command you to tie your robe and return to Gath this very moment.”

Her eyes went wide with shock. She thought she had finally conquered him, but she had only walked into her own trap.

Her face wrinkled in anger.

“Am I hurting you now?” he asked. “You wanted to be hurt.”

She did not answer. She could not answer. It was a stab of righteousness in her gut.

She sashed her robe angrily.

He said, “No consequences—my lady. As you promised. Complete and absolute submission. I am still a vassal of Gath, performing raids on the Negeb for Lord Achish.”

She left without a final word.

She finally knew she could not have him.

So she would destroy him.

The prison of Gath was not built for giants. So Lahmi the Rephaim was manacled to the wall of his isolated cell by his arms, with his legs double bound with thick rope, and his waist chained to a boulder. He was not as concerned about his bindings and how to get out of them as much as he was about fleeing the city, once he escaped the dungeon. He could easily be hunted down by Gath’s finest warriors. Then he would have to kill some of his brothers in arms, which he deeply wanted to avoid. But Lord Achish would undoubtedly send some Rephaim to make the catch more certain.

Lahmi’s thoughts were interrupted by a servant bringing gruel to eat. The servant was let in and brought the bucket up to the bound Rephaim, and ladled the slop into his mouth to eat. It was hard to tell if it was food or garbage, but he needed his strength.

Then the servant pulled back her cloaked hood. It was Lady Bisha in disguise.

“What are you doing here?” he whispered. “I had assumed it was you who ordered my imprisonment.”

It
was
Bisha who ordered his imprisonment. But that did not suit her interests any longer. She concocted a new story. “Do not be such a fool. Achish wanted to protect his investment in conquering Saul. You have your own imbecilic behavior to blame. Had you kept your childish temper to yourself, you would be out hunting David right now instead of stewing in your own piss and feces.”

Lahmi felt duly chastised. She was right after all. He had used every trick in the book to rationalize to himself his idiotic outburst. A thousand scenarios had gone through his head with a thousand different ways of giving Achish a piece of his mind as he imagined strangling the life out of him. Languishing in a dungeon tended to do that to a prisoner.

She was wrong about one thing, though. Stewing in his own self-deception was far more miserable than stewing in his own excrement.

She gave him some more to eat and continued, “I am here to give you a chance to fulfill your vengeance, if you do not ruin it again for yourself.”

“I am listening,” he whispered.

She said, “I have made clandestine contact with an Amalekite clan in the south. They are sending a small squad to break you out and will help you to kill David. He now resides in Ziklag.”

“When? What am I to look for?”

They were interrupted by an angry guard opening the door and stomping in, complaining, “If you are going to talk and not eat, then take the gruel and be gone with you.”

Bisha pulled up her hood so she would not be noticed.

She said in a scraggly voice, “Yes, my lord.”

Lahmi watched her walk away with the bucket. He was desperate to know what was coming, but he could not lose Bisha’s cover. The guard jerked her away without saying a word.

It was late into the night when Lahmi awakened with a start. Everything was silent, but his Nephilim sixth sense could tell something was afoot.

He heard the sound of muffled thuds and dragging bodies. He knew the guards must have been asleep at this point, so they were probably all taken by surprise.

The dungeon door opened.

It was not an Amalekite that came through, but a Gittite, one of the guards. He dragged the corpse of an Amalekite by the hair and dropped him within Lahmi’s sight at his feet. The Amalekite’s savage painted face was bashed in like a bloody pulp.

“So, it looks like you have some vicious desert rats as your friends. Five of them tried to kill us to free you.”

Another Gittite guard stepped in, limping with a wound from the fight.

A third Gittite entered, dragging another dead Amalekite to drop him on the floor.

The first guard said, “They are all dead. Killed a few of my comrades. And that gives me the chance to do what I have wanted to do for a long time: kill you and make it look like it was an accident of our brawl.”

The Gittite did not need to draw his sword, he already carried it in his hand.

Lahmi stared at the man with shock. “Why do you want to kill me?”

“For defiling my son and then murdering him, you unholy abomination.”

Lahmi could not possibly know who the guard was or who his son was. Lahmi could not remember how many young men he abused for his pleasure or how many of them had died in his lecherous, violent hands. There were dozens—buried and forgotten by him. As an elite Son of Rapha he was legally untouchable in such debauchery.

But it was inevitable one of them would come back to find him. He just never expected it would be at such an inopportune moment. His arms were chained to the wall, his legs bound fast in rope and a boulder chained to his waist.

The first guard thrust his sword toward Lahmi’s throat.

Lahmi dodged his head just in time.

The sword lodged between two of the stones in the wall behind him.

Lahmi yanked with all his might on his right chained arm
.

The anchor for the chain ripped out of the wall and flew like a sling, hitting the guard in the gut, breaking his ribs.

He dropped to the floor, leaving the sword stuck in the wall.

It had been his one surprise tactic. Lahmi had been preparing for a few days by loosening the anchor. The chains and manacles were made to retain normal men, not giants of extraordinary strength.

He reached up to grab the sword. But the second guard launched at him with a battle axe.

Lahmi had to release the sword and roll out of the way.

The battle axe came down and hit the sword, snapping it in two, leaving half the blade in the wall. The sword was useless.

Lahmi rolled to his stomach, his left hand still chained to the wall.

He looked back to locate the second guard and swung his hand backward.

The chain, weighted by the anchor, wrapped around the guard’s neck, and the anchor plate dug into his head, crushing it instantly.

The guard fell to the floor.

The chain had wrapped and embedded in the corpse. He could not shake it from the body. It turned Lahmi’s only possible weapon into a dead weight.

The third guard held a javelin toward Lahmi. But he stood defensively, not ready to attack.

The first guard yelled at him, while grabbing his throbbing ribs, “Give me the javelin, you fool!”

He ran over to grab the weapon.

Lahmi swiped his roped legs and tripped the first guard onto his face on the ground.

Lahmi yanked the chain in his right hand and it snapped off the head of the guard it was wrapped around.

He whirled it around and caught the javelin on the shaft, wrapping around it tight.

He yanked and the guard fell forward right into Lahmi’s grip. The fool had not let go of the weapon.

Lahmi pounded his fist onto the fool’s head, and crushed it like the Amalekite’s.

Lahmi’s legs were still roped tight, he was entangled in two dead bodies, and the chain to the boulder would not let him move any further.

He looked up to see the first guard picking up the battle axe.

Lahmi searched for an option, and saw the broken blade piece in the mortar above his head. He grabbed it and pulled it out, hands bleeding from the sharp edges.

The first guard raised his axe high above Lahmi.

Lahmi threw the sword blade and caught the first guard right in the throat.

He choked in his blood and fell backward to the floor.

Lahmi grabbed the javelin blade, snapped it off the staff and cut off the ropes on his legs.

Then, he pulled with all his might, using his legs to counterweight against the wall and yanked the other anchored chain from the stone.

He was free enough to reach the dead bodies of the guards. He found the keys to free himself from the boulder and manacles.

He gathered a dagger and two swords from the other dead warriors in the hallway. He sighed. If this was the Amalekites breaking him out, he had a thing or two to teach those incompetent barbarians. He made his way out of the dungeon.

              • • • • •

When Lahmi reached the forest outside Gath on foot, he was met by a raiding party of fifty Amalekites. Five of them were giants. They were painted for war with camouflage. They had crazed eyes. They twitched and spasmed their muscles as if they were being afflicted or manipulated by spirits. Lahmi had always considered them too bizarre to deal with, but now that they were aiding him through Bisha’s political machinations, he decided to take advantage of their offer.

The leader of the tribe greeted Lahmi. He patterned himself after the memory of the infamous Agag in every way, including his dress and name.

“Greetings, gibborim. I am Agag the Second. Your brother’s greatness has not been forgotten by my people. We seek a common goal: the destruction of the Seed of Abraham.” His eyes and neck twitched.

Lahmi was familiar with the original Agag. Though it was not unusual in the world for royalty to take on previous names in honor of their lineage or greatness, Lahmi thought it lessened the king’s own glory to mimic another rather than to carve out one’s own destiny. But they did share in common a hatred for the Israelites and their abominable presence in Canaan, as well as a desire for revenge upon the murderers of their kinsmen.

“From the river to the sea,” said Lahmi. By “river” he meant the Jordan River. “I will fight until these Hebrews are driven into the jaws of Leviathan.”

“Into the jaws of Leviathan,” repeated Agag. “Let us go. A search party is already after you.”

Strange
, thought Lahmi,
Agag’s voice sounded like it became another person
.

Lahmi turned to see a party of fifty gibborim on horseback and ten Rephaim on foot leaving the gates of Gath.

The Amalekites and Lahmi disappeared into the foliage of the forest on their way to their camp, miles in the southern Negeb.