Thomas Greanias - The Promised War

"They say about fourteen days for the healing to be complete," Salmon said. "But the men can fight after seven, which is the end of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which begins tomorrow."

Seven days!Deker thought. Rahab could be dead by then. She could be dead already if Hamas suspected that she gave the Hebrew spies the intel on his ambush plans. Meanwhile, they were all sitting ducks in this Gilgal place, with troops operating at less than half capacity.

What Bin-Nun was doing, Deker now concluded, was cleverly securing single-minded devotion from his troops ahead of the impending attack on Jericho. Circumcision and the Feast of Unleavened Bread during the healing would keep the men from feasting on sex with their wives and food from the new land. There would be no repeat of the mistake Moses had allowed when the Israelites first pitched camp at Shittim in Moab.

Deker knew then and there he had to grab the rest of his explosives from Kane and break for Jericho that very night. He had done Bin-Nun's dirty work twice now. He could wait no longer.

"I'm up soon," Salmon told him stoically. "You'll stay to watch?"

Watch? Deker knew Salmon considered this bizarre mutilation of male adults a holy ritual. But Deker had seen enough. "I'll skip the butcher shop, Salmon. I'm already cut and ready for action."

As Deker left the tent, he sensed Bin-Nun's eyes follow him on his way out. But Deker didn't look back, only heard the sound of the flint knife strike the stone and the scrape of the blade behind him.

Waiting until it was completely dark and the Passover meals had begun in the tents throughout Gilgal, Deker quietly made his way to the dramatic fires at the south end of the camp facing Jericho. There he beheld acres and acres of smelting furnaces-hundreds of them-stoked by Kane the Kenite's army of metalsmiths. The pillars of fire lit up the night.

Bin-Nun has bred his army, Deker thought. Now he was going to forge his swords.

But as Deker looked closely at the smelting furnaces on his way to find Kane, he noticed only wood was going in to stoke the fires. Not a single blade or any other metal was being forged.

These pyrotechnics, he realized, were yet another example of Bin-Nun's psychological warfare designed to strike the fear of God into the melting hearts of the Reahns huddled behind their walls. He could only imagine how the multiplication of Israel's pillar of fire into more than three hundred fires looked to Rahab and what must be going through her mind even now.

At the same time, the firewall proved to be an invaluable defensive move, blocking the ability of the Reahn watchtowers to see behind it. Deker knew from night training how a bright object at night affected the naked eye's ability to see behind it. A Reahn on the walls who turned his eyes away from the fires might require a half hour for his eyes to readjust. Bin-Nun, meanwhile, could safely maneuver his troops behind the light until he was ready to attack. Deker supposed the same could be true in the daytime with the smoke. Either way, the Reahns were blind.

"Is anything around here real?" he asked when he saw Kane standing outside his tent, tending to one of his larger furnaces.

Kane was smoking some stinking, home-fashioned cigar and seemed to have been expecting him. "Only the tin and copper inside the treasury of Jericho."

Deker had already begun to suspect as much.

"So that explains why Bin-Nun is attacking Jericho," Deker said. "And why he's going to kill every breathing thing in Jericho, burn all its grain instead of feeding his own people with it and declare a herem ban preventing anyone from picking up even a penny from the blood-puddled streets under penalty of death. He says he needs the metals for the Treasury of Yahweh. But they're for you, Kane, so you can forge them into the weapons the Israelite war machine will need to fight in the wars beyond Jericho."

"The survival of Israel is at stake," Kane said, pushing his iron poker into the furnace to stoke the fire. "If we prevail against Jericho, we will need all the weapons we can forge if we are to have any hope of going up against the superior armies of the five kingdoms to the south and the even stronger armies to the north. Gilgal here will serve as a station for the rest of the campaign for the Promised Land," he pointed out. "The troops can pass through anytime for repairs and new weapons."

"After they destroy Jericho and everyone inside."

"Every breathing thing," Kane said. "From the river to the Great Sea."

Deker stood in the glow of the heat and looked out across the desert toward Jericho. He couldn't even see it. All their lights were out, like a blackout for an air raid. Deker wouldn't be surprised if many Reahns, despite the assurances of General Hamas, feared hailstones of fire were about to rain down on them as they had on the Egyptians forty years ago. Such was the cloud of terror General Bin-Nun had successfully blown over their walls. But it was a mirage that would blow over soon enough, and the walls would still be standing when it did unless Deker took action.

"Give me my explosives," Deker demanded.

Kane eyed him up and down. Deker flashed no blade, but Kane seemed to understand Deker didn't need anything more than his bare hands to kill quickly and quietly. "You want to go to Jericho tonight?"

"We promised her," Deker said.

Kane screwed up his eyes. "Rahab the harlot?"

Deker nodded.

"Well, Israel must keep her word," Kane said. "But you don't need explosives to protect her. There's nothing you can do for her right now."

"I can bring down the walls."

"You'll do that when we attack."

"The attack is at least seven days away, Kane. Rahab and her family could be tortured and killed by then. Hamas must realize somebody told us about his plans to cut us off at the Jordan. And now that we've crossed, somebody is going to pay, and it's probably going to be her or those close to her. We might pass over her treason, but Hamas won't, and her blood will be on our hands."

Kane looked stern. "Bringing down the walls before we attack will only enable and encourage the Reahns to flee their city."

"Exactly," Deker said. "No genocide. I've seen the future, Kane. Israel will only make the world hate it by killing everything that breathes. I can change it."

"You believe that the nations will hate the Hebrews because of anything the Hebrews do or don't do?"

"Yes."

"They hated the Hebrews when they were slaves. They hate them now that they're warriors. Sparing Jericho won't change that. Neither can you."

"I can try."

"But if you succeed, the Reahns will take their treasure with them. We won't have enough weapons."

"Maybe if I succeed, Israel won't need as many."

Kane stood looking at Deker for a long moment. Deker couldn't tell if his eyes held pity or a kind of respect. Finally, Kane turned toward his tent and said, "I have something for you."

He left Deker at the furnace and disappeared behind the flap of his tent.

Deker looked around at the pillars of fire lined up across the desert. Bin-Nun had erected as much of a wall to keep the Israelites inside Gilgal as he had to keep the Reahns out. And his circumcision of the troops guaranteed no desertions before the attack. Was Gilgad that different at this point than Jericho? Was General Bin-Nun truly as morally superior to General Hamas as Salmon insisted? Or was he only going to destroy a wall of stone in order to replace it with a wall of religion in the name of Yahweh?

Kane emerged a moment later with Deker's explosives pack and a small ceremonial washbowl painted red and black. He handed the bowl to Deker delicately.

"I kept one of your bricks and used it to make this."

Deker's hands trembled as he stared at the bowl. It looked just like the kind he had seen in Rahab's place, but the shape reminded him of another, more terrible piece of pottery that had claimed Rachel's life back in the Israel he knew.