Wings of the Wind Read online

  Somehow I reached the edge of the valley with my head attached to my body. Panting, bruised, and bloodied, I ducked beside a large boulder, making myself small and scanning the unimaginable scene with horror. Death surrounded me on every side, and the Hebrews continued to advance like an endless river. How many were there?

  There was only one more arrow in my quiver. Should I shoot? Or save it? I was going to die regardless. What did it matter?

  I reached behind me and pulled out the arrow, one made by my own hand. In one swift move, I ran my thumb across the feathers of the fletching—the offering of a turquoise-winged kingfisher I had snared near my village cistern—and fit the nock against the bowstring. Aiming for the nearest Hebrew, I held my breath, focusing on the pulse where my fingers met sinew, waiting for the silence between thundering heartbeats before I released.

  Victory! He fell to the ground, clutching his side.

  However, instead of feeling the pride I expected, my stomach threatened to rebel again, and my eyes burned. What have I done?

  Pain slammed into my left shoulder, twisting me around and buckling my knees. My temple collided with the boulder. Whooshing swirled through my head, crashed against the wall of consciousness, and pulled me into a black abyss of silence.

  Fire burned against my shoulder. I tried to shift away, but it followed. Flames licked at my skin, the flash of pain spreading like lightning. I forced my eyes open. My vision blurred and the flames glowed red, like blood.

  It was blood. An arrow had pierced my shoulder. I attempted to roll to my back and then cursed myself for doing so; the arrowhead shifted against bone, cutting new teeth of agony into my body. I should not have tried; my legs were pinned under a dead man and another corpse lay across my abdomen.

  Clear, deep blue and a searing sun, now high in the sky, hung over me. My mouth ached for water. Someone blocked my view, silhouetted against the light. I blinked, but even such a small action was torture.

  “This one’s alive.” The declaration seemed to come from far away, as if floating high above me, the familiar language weighted with a foreign accent.

  “Finish it,” yelled another disembodied voice. “We are to leave no man breathing.”

  My eyes closed and I drew a deep breath, a shuddering inhale that would be my last. The enemy sword would cleave the last of the life from my body, and I could sleep, fly to the gods, if they deigned to receive one who had shunned them.

  Nothing came. No sword. No end. I opened my eyes and a blood-spattered, bearded face hovered over me with a confused expression. Soundless words formed on his lips. A woman?

  My helmet was gone and my braid free. There was no escaping the fate that would now meet me on this battlefield. My brothers, unrestrained even around their sister, had drunkenly regaled me with stories of women in battle camps. Victors plundered women along with weapons and supplies. Perhaps I would again lose consciousness from the pain of my wound and he would kill me quickly after he sated his—

  “Can you move?” His surprising question scattered my disturbing thoughts. The man thrust his sword into his scabbard, pushed the dead men off my legs and body, and knelt beside me. Cinnamon-brown eyes, full of conflict, met mine. A thick, ragged beard covered his face and met long, brown hair streaked with gold from the sun.

  In my confusion and haze, I could not answer. Why was he waiting? Was he drawing out the terror? Even if I could reach the dagger at my belt with my useless arm, there was no strength left in me to fight.

  He looked around, as if searching out someone to aid him. But instead of calling out for another enemy to help slaughter me, he checked me for weapons and, finding my dagger, relieved me of my last defense. “Rather not have that jammed between my ribs,” he muttered.

  Then, in a baffling move, he slipped a small skin-bag from his shoulder and held it to my parched lips. An explosion of cool, clean water poured into my mouth. I choked and coughed. He placed a hand behind my good shoulder and lifted me, guiding me into a sitting position. “Here. Drink.”

  With only a brief pause to consider his intentions, I lifted my mouth to the spout and guzzled. The sweetest mountain-fresh water I had ever tasted doused the burn in my throat, stirring a spark of life, of unwelcome hope, into my desiccated body.

  “That arrow is in deep.” He examined my back but did not touch the wound. “I’ll find a healer.”

  Why would this enemy, one whose face was streaked and speckled with the blood of my countrymen, take me to a healer? He checked my other limbs and, satisfied that I was able, helped me stand. A spasm of searing pain spiked down my arm and across my chest. The world swayed and tilted. My knees collapsed. I was locked in his arms for a moment before blackness engulfed me again.

  3

  Tobiah

  Why would a woman be here? Did these cursed Canaanites force girls to fight their battles? No wonder Yahweh had directed us to drive out these people—they were nothing but savages. I would no more send my sister into battle than surrender my sword.

  Corpses littered the valley floor, thousands upon thousands, as lifeless as the shifting sands in which I had buried so many loved ones. Yahweh had delivered this enemy into our hands as he had promised, retribution for the unprovoked attack by Arad’s forces only a few weeks ago.

  Taking advantage of the woman’s faint, I laid her on the ground again and broke off the hollow arrow shaft with my hands. She winced and moaned, but her eyes did not open.

  Her hair, braided around her head and red like a flame, was the only clue she was female. Her helmet lay in the sand, but she wore the leather-scaled armor and tunic of a man, a quiver strapped across her back. Four red slashes stood out on her forearm, jagged wounds I suspected had been self-inflicted.

  I had been so close to shoving my sword through her still-rising chest. In the heartbeat it took to comprehend she was not a man, she had looked up at me. No anger. No fear in her peculiar blue-green eyes. Just pure acquiescence. As if she welcomed death.

  Something shifted inside me in that moment. Although driven by fury at the Canaanites, bloodied and bruised by their hands and anxious to find my friend Shimon, I could not do the deed.

  Shofarim sounded close by—the horns’ call a declaration of victory. The tactic planned by Yehoshua, the commander of our army and second in command only to Mosheh, had been flawless. We had crept through the dark, surrounding the arrogant Canaanites and sweeping them into a writhing circle of confusion and panic before their charioteers had even mounted to ride. This woman must have been hit early on, and the two bodies sprawled across her had protected her from further damage by sword or arrow.

  Hebrew wounded and dying were being removed from the field, but no one must notice that I carried a woman, especially a Canaanite one. With a quick glance around to ensure no one was watching, I unwound a turban from a nearby corpse and wrapped it around her head, hoping my hasty knot would hold.

  Then, with careful movements so as not to jostle her wounded shoulder, I pulled her up and over my own. She groaned but did not struggle, yet somehow she retained a death grip on her bow until I pried it from her fingers. I nearly tossed it aside, but something about the way she’d clung to the weapon compelled me to bring it along.

  As I walked back to our camp, I continued scanning the milling Hebrew soldiers for Shimon’s black hair and the Egyptian features he’d inherited from his father. Although we’d been separated early in the conflict, he’d surely be at the tent when I returned, for there was no more skilled swordsman than Shimon. What would he say when I appeared with a bleeding woman slung over my shoulder? No doubt some mocking quip about my inability to resist taking battle spoils.

  To avoid prying eyes, I skirted the perimeter of the battle encampment and ducked into the small, black tent Shimon and I had pitched at the far edge. The defensive jest I’d prepared withered on my lips, the silence inside the tent mocking me instead. Where is he?

  Forced to push aside the uneasiness that surfaced with the que
stion, I carefully laid the Canaanite woman on my pallet, but she jerked and cried out when her shoulder hit the ground. A jolt of phantom pain shot through me at her outburst, but she stayed beyond the realm of awareness, her face pale even through the dirt that disguised her features. What would she look like when the filth was washed away?

  With a start, I stumbled backward a step. What was I doing bringing this unknown woman into my tent? I needed to find Shimon, not waste my time trying to save an enemy, even a female one.

  Indecision yanked at both sides of me as blood seeped around the arrow shaft in her shoulder, dripping onto my blanket. If I didn’t go now, she would die. Biting back a snarl of frustration, I slipped out of the tent, throwing a prayer skyward that she might stay unconscious until I brought back a healer—and another, more fervent one that Shimon would be here when I returned.

  Men lay on the ground all around the healers’ tents, their blood soaking the sand. Groans and cries filled the air. Two healers knelt in the dirt, washing wounds and applying strong-smelling poultices. I asked for help from both, but their vacant-eyed stares told me every hand was occupied.

  The Canaanite woman would die on my pallet. I would never know her name, or why she chose to fight today. I turned to go and prayed those beautiful eyes would not open again, that she might drift into the next world in peace. Perhaps my sword should have delivered swift mercy on the battlefield.

  A hand on my arm stopped me. “Can I help you?” A tiny woman stood beside me, silver brows furrowed in concern.

  “I need a healer. There is a wom—a wounded soldier in my tent.”

  She lifted a reassuring smile. “I am not a physician, but I am a midwife. I came to help attend to the wounded.” She gestured for me to lead the way.

  Another prayer flew from my lips to Yahweh. Perhaps the woman might yet live. I pushed aside all the questions that came with that possibility and concentrated on weaving my way through the multitude of tents back to my own.

  Before entering, I turned back to the midwife, my hand on the door flap. “Can you be discreet?”

  Her eyes widened, but she agreed, her sober expression assuring me of her sincerity. She gasped at the sight of the red-haired woman on my bed, but before I could open my mouth to explain, the midwife was on her knees, examining the wound.

  “Almost all the way through. Can you help me to prop her on her side so we can remove the shaft?” She asked for my knife, cut the leather bindings off the woman’s armor, removed the breastplate, and then cut the bloodied tunic away from the wound.

  As I held the woman’s shoulders, the midwife pushed on the end of the arrow shaft with a rock until the head broke free of the gash and she was able to pull the shaft clean through.

  Blood gushed from the wound, front and back, but the midwife did not pale. Calmly, as if she were instructing me how to prepare a meal, she ordered me to press fresh linen against both sides of the woman’s shoulder until the flow subsided.

  She washed the shoulder with water from my goat-skin bag and packed the wound with a thick salve of honey, salts, and strong-smelling herbs from the satchel around her waist. She bound the woman’s shoulder in strips of clean linen.

  “She is fortunate. Her collarbone may be broken and she may not regain full use of that arm, but unless infection sets in, she should live.” The midwife stood and turned to leave. “We must watch for sign of fever.” She spun her tiny body back around with a fierce gleam in her eyes. “You know the law.”

  It was not a question. Every Hebrew knew the laws of war. Yehoshua had repeated them again last night as we prepared for battle. Women in enemy camps were not to be violated. If one was taken captive, provisions were allotted to protect her. I nodded my head. I had no intention of forcing myself on a wounded woman. Canaanite or not.

  Her narrowed eyes pinned me. “Then you will marry her?”

  The demand slammed me in the gut. “Marry her? Of course not!” The law provided for a Hebrew to claim a captive woman as a wife if he so desired, but the thought had not crossed my mind.

  “If you don’t, she could be violated, or killed, or both.” The midwife’s tiny fists were on her hips.

  I stuttered, my tongue tangling. “But . . . she’s a Canaanite . . . and out there on the field with a bow in her hands. Fighting against us. She’s not my responsibility.”

  She came close to me, lifted her chin, and searched my face with intense scrutiny. She was strong, this midwife, and obviously one of the few left who had come out of Egypt and through the sea almost forty years ago. Her iron will was evident in the intensity of her gray eyes. “Of course she is. She became such the moment you brought her into your tent.” She gestured to the bleeding woman with a frown. “Look at her. Poor thing. I cannot imagine the desperation that would drive her to plunge into such horror.”

  “No.” I shook my head to clear the haze that had clouded over my arguments. “I cannot. My family—”

  She interrupted with a smile and a gentle pat to my arm. “You are an honorable young man, I can see it in your face. You saved this woman for a reason. Don’t let it be for naught. Yahweh guided you. As part of this nation, you have been given mercy. And mercy is a gift best passed along.”

  “I can’t decide . . . not now . . . I need to go find my friend.” Stumbling over my cluttered thoughts, I nodded toward the empty, rumpled pallet on the far side of the tent, and her eyes followed the gesture.

  Compassion weighted her brow. “Go. I will stay with her until you return.”

  The last rock was heavier than all the rest. I clenched it in my fist. Unwilling to release its weight. Unwilling to place it atop the pile of stones that covered Shimon’s still body. A body devoid of the friend who had sustained me through some of my darkest days. A friend who would not be here to walk beside me as I mourned his death.

  This wilderness consumed everything. Sand whipped around my legs, stirred by a hot breeze, scraping my skin before lifting into the air with a gritty rush. I dropped the stone into its greedy clutches and turned away.

  All around me, grim-faced men dug graves in which to lay bodies of friends and brothers. The thought that this was only the beginning, only the first of many battles that would be fought in the coming days, pierced my chest with bone-deep sadness. And Shimon would not be here to raise his sword alongside mine. I had failed him. Had failed to protect my sister’s husband. What would I say when I saw her? How could I tell her that the man she’d loved since she was a girl was no more?

  Why did I not find him sooner? Perhaps if I had tried harder to stay next to him when we attacked . . . Perhaps if I had not wasted time with that woman . . .

  The midwife’s demand barged its way into my mind as I trudged back to camp. Marriage to a Canaanite woman? How could I possibly consider such a thing? Especially when I had just buried Shimon?

  She might not even survive the wound she’d received. Her skin had been pallid, her body listless in my arms. Why had she been on that battlefield? I’d kept an eye out for any other women among the dead, but the one laid out in my tent seemed to be the only female among the Canaanite army. Had she truly been shooting that bow she’d clung to with unconscious ferocity? Surely not.

  Yet regardless of how dangerous she was, she was still a woman. And a woman alone in this hazardous wilderness was vulnerable. If she lived and I did not claim her, someone else would—someone who might want to hurt or destroy her.

  I knew nothing of her, but the thought of leaving her to such a fate curdled my insides, much as the recollection of how close I had been to snuffing out her life earlier unsettled me. I’d thought nothing of cutting down the savage men who met us on the battlefield with tattooed, scarred bodies and the color of hate in their eyes. They were there with only one purpose—to destroy us and thwart the will of Yahweh. They’d been warned time and time again to leave the Land but remained nothing but belligerent. Yahweh had given them over four hundred years since the judgment of Sodom and her repugnant sist
er-cities. Four hundred long years to repent, and almost forty to flee from the people whose God had broken the back of Egypt. Yet when the woman had opened her eyes for those brief moments, no belligerence had met my gaze, only stark, howling grief. The same agony that now cleaved a chasm in my chest.

  Hands on my hips and gaze clamped on the stretch of ground in front of me, I stood before my tent, now forever empty of my closest friend, the man whose marriage to my sister had solidified our brotherhood. These last few steps seemed infinitely more difficult than the thousands I’d taken this morning with an unconscious woman slung over my shoulder. The midwife would no doubt demand an answer as soon as I stepped through the door.

  Although my only thought when I rose from my pallet this morning had been vengeance on a faceless enemy, my fate seemed to be determined—by Yahweh, the midwife, or perhaps both. I would be forced to go against the last wishes of my mother and those of my sister, but I had little alternative. I hadn’t shielded Shimon from death, but I could at least shield this woman from being assaulted or killed by men with far less mercy than I—and I had met more than a few of those among our numbers.

  After the thirty days allotted were fulfilled, I would give her the freedom to stay or to go—the law allowed a captive woman that much. For now, I would protect her. Whether she welcomed the shelter I offered or not.

  4

  Alanah

  16 NISSAN

  1407 BC

  My eyes stung; even the weak yellow light filtering through the seams in the tent wall blinded me. I tried to shift my position, but a spear of pain plunged through my shoulder, bringing with it a wave of nausea.

  Was the arrow still lodged there?

  A bandage encased my shoulder, and my arm was bound to my chest. The fragrance of strong herbs and honey told me that a healing poultice had been applied. I sniffed again. No smell of infection, but how long had I been here?